Migrant labourers returning home to the East and the North-East for casting their votes in the Assembly polls seems to have its impact on the farming and allied sectors in Kerala. The pineapple sector is reported to be the worst-hit, as growers say up to 50 per cent of workers, mainly from the poll-bound states of Assam and West Bengal, have headed back home.

This has coincided with the harvest time when the sector is getting ready to meet the surging demand for the ensuing Ramadan festival season, amid rising prices of the fruit. Baby John, president of Pineapple Growers Association Keralam, told BusinessLine that the growers are now looking to engage labourers from Jharkhand and Odisha. Besides harvesting, other farming activities such as new planting, manuring, field clearing and mulching have also been affected.

“The harvest is likely to be initiated from the second week of April and shortage of labourers may delay the whole process,” John said. The crisis could not have come at a worse time for the farmers since the pineapple sector has just come back to normal after Covid-19, with rising prices. It is estimated that the pineapple sector alone engages 25,000 migrant workers of which at least 20,000 workers had trudged back home at the time of the pandemic, he added.

Rubber sector too hit

The rubber sector has also to bear the brunt of migrant labour shortage especially in packing houses, processing units, impacting the output and dispatch of materials to consuming industries, said George Valy, president, Indian Rubber Dealers Federation. Workers from Assam and West Bengal had been entrusted with the job.

However, some of the growers have managed to shift labourers hailing from Jharkhand working in their cardamom plantations in Idukki to rubber farms. Thanks to a slowdown in rubber procurement by consuming industries due to the financial year-end and the holy week in Kerala, Valy said the absence of migrant workers may not make any serious impact on the rubber trade.

The impact of workers shortage was minimal in pepper, cardamom and vanilla mainly because of the off-season which normally starts from February-end and extends till June. “Most of the migrant labourers have already gone back after the harvest and they would return by May-end for the next harvest,” said Joseph Sebastian, a vanilla farmer in Idukki’s Thankamony district.

Covid-19 disruption

TP Sethumadhavan, Consultant to the World Bank on Sustainable Agriculture, said that Kerala is heavily dependent on workers from Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar and Chhattisgarh to address the scarcity of skilled labourers. The Covid-19 disruption has created a shortage of hands in not just agriculture but also in livestock production and construction sectors. It is estimated that around 27 lakh labourers have been engaged in the State. Since then, more than 40 per cent of them have left and are now working in their native States.

The return of these workers from their native places after assembly elections will take more than a month, affecting agriculture operations, dairying, poultry production, and agri processing sectors. “More than 85 per cent of the commercial farms rely on migrant labourers for operations as they are very skilled in milking, cleaning the sheds and harvesting the crop,” he added.

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