Tapioca cultivation has been brisk in Pachamalai in the district. It is a major crop cultivated on the hills which falls under the Uppliyapuram panchayat union.
This union accounts for an area of 1,500 hectares of land under the crop.
Of this, 1,000 hectares is in Pachamalai, according to Agriculture Department sources. This apart, Thuraiyur block has an equal area of 1,500 hectares under the crop.
Sources said the quality of tapioca cultivated on the hills in Pachamalai was superior to the variety harvested in the plains in Uppilliyapuram and Thuraiyur blocks.
The red loam soil on the hills enriches the quality and quantum of starch in tapioca, making it much sought-after commodity by the sago industrialists in the adjoining Salem district.
Farmers struggling hard
The crop was raised for one year on the hills and for 10 months in the plains.
A farmer of Chinnamangalam, R. Ramesh, who has cultivated the crop on eight acres, said that he had to struggle hard to cultivate the crop, as it needed sustained irrigation facility. “The more we irrigate the fields, the larger the size of the crop is,” he says explaining the hard work put in by him.
He had drilled a borewell from which he gets water to fill an open well. “I have been using the open well to irrigate the tapioca fields,” he says.
Farmers complain that although they harvest the field, exploitation by middlemen or commission agents was a setback to their profitability. “We have to take the crop to Athur to market the produce to the middlemen,” says Mr. Ramesh.
Farmers said they had to struggle hard right from cultivation to marketing. They had to incur huge expenditure for taking the produce to Athur down the hills. Middlemen and commission agents fix the price. About 13.5 bags of tapioca (each bag weighing 75 kg) was reckoned as one tonne for which some commission had to be given to the middlemen.
Official sources said most farmers on the hills even get advance sum from the brokers, promising to sell the produce to them.
There had been a growing demand for the tapioca cultivated on the hills because of its high starch content.
However, there was a need for avoiding the middlemen so as to ensure higher profits, say farmers.
