vanishing dreams by subin mananthavady

The beginning of 21st century marked an increase in hard ships of Indian farmers especially in Kerala. During this time Globalisation badly affected the price stability of Agricultural products. This pushed farms in to debt trap. Now the farmers in Kerala want to escape from the debt trap and so they are investing in diverse crops like Ginger Banana and increasingly Vanilla. Only through this they can hope to find an escape route.
The intelligent ones walk before the times, the other with the times. A group of people in Kerala tried to walk before the times and so they have been able to find out new avenues in cultivation. Vanilla is an important aspect of this innovative agricultural investment. Vanilla is a partial shade loving plant. It is grown under coconut and areca net plantations. In India it is more cultivated in States like Kerala, Karnataka and in Tamilnadu in lower Pulneys and the Pollachi area. Elevation up to 1500m provides ideal setting for vanilla cultivation.
In this situation Vanilla fetched Rs. 3800/Kg. in 2003. But this year the price is just Rs.250/Kg. The processed Vanilla, which fetched Rs.25000/ Kg in last year, has no buyers today. Now the price of the processed Vanilla in the international market is in the range of Rs.2000 to 2500. The vine that was sold at Rs.150/mtr. Now fetches a meager Rs.10/mtr. On the one hand vanilla cultivation spreads throughout because of its high price. On the other hand, it is affected by fungal and viral diseases. Recently diseases like root decay fading etc. are found in Vanilla due to fungus and virus. In 2004, one of the farmers in Kalpetta, Wayanad dist. burned his acres of Vanilla plants, due to these diseases.
There seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel for Vanilla farmers. Those farmers who had plunged in to processing Vanilla beans to protect themselves from the fall in the price of the raw produce, have landed In a spot as the treated produce is begging for buyers. Vanilla farmers in Kerala are at a quandary with tones of treated produce eat their disposal. Buyers had kept away from the raw beans market during this harvest season. Farmers perceived this as a deliberate attempt to crash the price of the raw beans.
Hence farmers with the financial and technical support of the spices Board and the Indian institute of spices research, ventured in to Vanilla processing expecting a better price. However, much to the discomfiture of farmers, the processed beans is found no takers in the market. Though the spices board has announced that it would purchase the best quality processed Vanilla, farmers are chary about move.
The spices board which preached about the opportunities of Vanilla told that farmers would get minimum 4000 Rupees per Kg. raw beans and they gave 425/- rupees as subsidy per one unit. All these tempted the farmers to turn to vanilla cultivation. The next step was to secure this precious plant. Farmers adopted high-tech farming methods to get maximum profit. Price of Vanilla vine rose from Rs.15 to Rs.150.
The vanilla farmers evolved novel methods to protect their crops last year. The old five-feet high barbed iron fencing on stone poles were replaced by eight - feet concrete pillars with eight lines of inter lacing iron fencing or costly iron net. Apart from using dogs to guard the farm, some farmers even electrified their fences. Tribes who were adept in using bow and arrow were also deputed. As the vine thieves to increase many farmers had to appoint Ghoorkhas to prevent it. For these security measures, some farmers spent up to Rs.3000/- to Rs.5000/- as monthly salary to Ghoorkhas.
The thieves did their homework to out smart the farmers. Even country bombs were used to scare away watchman and farmers. The police in the Wayanad District registered more than 50 cases of Vanilla theft last year and a few were also nabbed. In the Kalpetta circle alone the police had registered ten cases and five persons were arrested. All this has come to an end. Vanilla farming has lost its charm. But some farmers still retain faith in the crop. Benjamin Isho, state president of the Vanilla growers association said that the association had 18000 farmers from the Wayanad District as members. About 90 percent were newcomers to Vanilla farming, he said. With the crises continuing to haunt the sector, the plants now remain unattended. Apart from the poor demand from the buyer the danger of processed beans gathering fungus due to climatic changes to has hit the farmers bad.
In the beginning banks were competed to sanction loan to farmers. Some banks gave up to 1 lakh rupees per acre. Loan festivals were conducted even in villages. Farmers believed that they could repay the loan only after harvest. But now they lost all hopes because they don’t have even a market to sell it. The multinational companies stopped collecting beans to destroy the Indian Market, like Cadburys Company they too never revealed the method of vanilla processing.
Thus the farmers had to sell the beans the very same day of harvest. This was a real trap to destroy farmers. In Wayanad itself the production of vanilla will reach 50 tones. In whole Kerala this will be 300 tones. Last year it was almost 50 tones in whole Kerala. Majority of the farmers doesn’t have the facility of processing and stock up to raise the price even through they lost that hope. “In International level ten multinational companies dominate the market. They unite together as one or two companies. That will affect the price of vanilla negatively. The after effect in the lack of competition between companies to buy vanilla. This is a technique to reduce the price by the farmers themselves” says Biju one of the vanilla grower of Wayanad.
It was 8 years back Biju’s father Plavelil Varghese died. His 2 acre’s was full of coconut and pepper cultivation plot. But it all proved great loss due to many deceases. At that time spices board selected Koilery bad Thanickal as the places to establish model vanilla plantations to spread vanilla cultivation in Wayanad. They considered these places as very suitable to cultivate vanilla.
That time there was no agricultural product which had a fair market price like vanilla. So Biju and his brother Saji decided to cultivate vanilla. Biju remember that 8 years back there wasn’t anybody to stock vanilla except one or two small companies. So every body contempt us. They even teased by asking is it flourished! And so on........ Later due to the effective campaign of spices board about the golden price of vanilla every farmers of that area turned to vanilla cultivation. When it accepted widely the people of Wayanad started buying vanilla vines even from Karnataka. Mediators got a very good profit by selling vanilla vines which they collected by 20 rupees from Karnataka and sold it as 150 rupees per meter in Wayanad.
In 2003 price of vanilla reached to the maximum. At that time the representatives of big companies came direct to plantations and brought vanilla. Even regional managers of some famous companies came themselves and telephoned farmers to buy Vanilla. They came to plantations before harvest to collect unripped and spoiled beanses. First quality beans sold for 4000/-Rs. Per one kg. First quality 70 beanses weight one kg. That means price of one beans might be 50 or 60 rupees. Thus majority of farmers turned to vanilla cultivation. But now they are in a great dilemma.
Any of these companies turned to farmers hither to even at the time of harvest. Farmers are in great hurry to sell this beanses because it is getting over ripped. Indian companies are in crisis due to their export of spoiled and unripped beanses and got returned it too. There started the unlucky period of Indian companies. Thus nobody in there to buy even good beanses from India. “These are all the tricks of companies to reduce the price of vanilla. Even the employees of the spices board get a share of this profit. We do not know their parameters and do not know whether the board would purchase our processed produce. It is not known how many firms would come forward to purchase the produce from farmers at this rate”, Biju said.
Vanilla growers association too accuses spices board for this. These same spices now are in a hurry to create new vanilla growers. Processed vanilla is still get golden price in market. In this situation they can easily handle this problem by collecting raw beans from farmers and export it after proper processing. They never tried at least to get down in to vanilla market to control it. They consciously avoid this tragedy and went on to distribution process of tissue cultured vanilla plants. Due to rushing price farmers were in a hurry to secure this. The wide spread of vanilla cultivation several companies were established for its subsidiary things like fertilization, cultivation, practice, security, watering and even vanilla collection. These companies attracted farmers and exploited them and consumed great profit.
Now these companies spread the news that the price of vanilla is decreasing and turned their face from buying processed vanilla. They conducted a National Seminar at Bangalore on 13, 14 February 2004 which is lead by unique Exposians Ltd registration fee of 1950 to 2950 to destroy the hope of farmers. More than 2000 farmers participated in this seminar.
Madagascar was the first large scale producer of vanilla. The farmers were inspired by the news that the representatives from Madagascar farmers would come there to participate in this seminar. But the representative who presented an essay in this seminar was not the representative of farmer but Dominic Andrias, who is a business manager of Trinity Company, which is one of the leading vanilla processing and marketing company in Madagascar. The 17 essays which were presented in this seminar were full of fears and foretelling about the falling price of vanilla for the coming seasons. These are all gives a crystal clear idea about the exploiting mentality of multinational companies. Due to this seminar the organizers squeezed lakh as from farmers and that becomes a business meeting to create new marketing techniques of multinational monopolies.
In the past, vanilla market prices were effectively controlled by the Madagascar based Vanilla Alliance. A carted which stockpiled and released vanilla beans on the world market, depending on supply and price considerations. With increased production and exports by other countries and smuggling of vanilla out of Madagascar at below official prices. Prices have dropped dramatically on the world market. The fluctuations in process currently are mostly due to shifts in supply of vanilla from source countries, particularly Madagascar and Indonesia.
Since most purchases of vanilla by US buyers are for extraction purpose they bend to buy beans which are lower in quality, and therefore cheaper than those purchased for much smaller gourmet market. Some US importers report that prices are falling faster for the extract grades of vanilla. The problem for producer is that the gourmet market is much smaller than the extract market.
The vanilla which had been a great demand in international market last year faces disaster with in months because of their well planed campaign. The reason for the recent quick hike in prices of vanilla is the large scale destruction of vanilla plantaions in Madagascar due to a twister and in international level real vanilla gets more acceptance as a part of avoiding synthetic vanilla from food items.
It blocked the import of vanilla to the USA which is the main consumer of vanilla. Recently the USA banned the use of synthetic vanilla. So the requirement of natural vanilla has quickly gone up. This yields high prices for natural vanilla. The USA and other vanilla importing countries turn to India for vanilla. Naturally the situation helps to increase the price of vanilla in Kerala. The high price of vanilla influences the social and economic structure of some parts of our state. So the market value of land has suddenly increased.
Many factors influence the price of vanilla and its future. Now the situation of vanilla is very poor because the price of vanilla has suddenly decreased. The high use of synthetic vanillin is also a reason for the decreasing price of vanilla. India itself uses more than 400 tones of synthetic vanilla. In whole world it is about 28000 tones. Campaign was that in near future natural vanilla should be inevitable in international level. Thus the farmers would get high marketing opportunity and warned the farmers against the cheatings of multination controlled market. Their fate would be same as the coco cultivators of Kerala.
Madagascar, the world’s largest vanilla cultivators produced 1000 to 1500 tone vanilla per year. But the thing change after the attack of a twister 3 years back. It reduces the production as 500 tones. From 1985 – 2000 price of raw beans had been 400 per kilo and processed vanilla got 4000 Rs. When production decreased, price increased in very large scale.
In 2003 price of processed vanilla was 12000-15000. In 2004 January it increased as 24000-30000. For processed vanilla it was about 33000 rupees. This year the expected production of Madagascar is about 1000 to 1500 tone. Thus according to merchants the price will decrease. But farmers can’t agree with it. Now any of these farmers never expects the last year price of 3600 per kilo but they hopes for a minimum price to survive.
(The writer is a Kerala-based freelance journalist, can be contacted on: subinmdy@journalist.com or subinmdy@gmail.com )