From a small piece of land adjoining the confluence of the Pampa and the Manimala rivers, the rolling green carpet of sugar cane extends to a vast area of five acres. Standing on one end of this field, Raghunathan Nair, a 66-year-old farmer, waves his hand in an arc. “This whole region once used to be a vast sugar cane field. But it’s all gone now. Over the years, canes gave way to short-term crops such as tapioca and plantain,” he says.
After a gap of over three decades, the sweet scent of newly cut sugar cane has made a comeback to the verdant landscape of upper Kuttanad, thanks to a year of hard work and perseverance by the Pampa Karimbu Karshaka Samiti (sugar cane farmers’ association). The success of an experimental farming initiative by the collective on a five-acre field in Kadapra has inspired more farmers to join the cause.
“For generations, sugar cane formed the bittersweet lifeblood of the local economy here. Our attempt is to reclaim this agricultural heritage,” adds Mr. Nair, secretary of the collective. The collective also received support from the Pathanamthitta district panchayat. As a first step, a high-yielding variety named ‘Madhurima’ was provided to the collective from the Agriculture department’s Sugarcane Seed Farm at Pandalam.
However, one challenge remains — finding a market for their produce and obtaining a fair price. The sugar mill in the area, the Pampa Sugar Factory (The Travancore Sugars), ceased operations in the early 1990s. As a result, hundreds of youths were forced to leave farming and seek employment elsewhere, just as Mr. Nair did.
To overcome this hurdle, the farmers are now setting up their own ‘chakku’ (jaggery unit) to process the crop, aiming to fetch a better price in the market. Plans are also afoot to engage small-scale manufacturing units that use the fibre that is left after crushing the cane as raw material.
According to Shajan V.R., Professor and head of the Agriculture Research Station at Thiruvalla, sugar cane is the most ideal crop for cultivation in the region, which is prone to inundation twice a year during the southwest and northeast monsoon. “Sugar cane used to be cultivated in a vast area of over 30,000 acres, which extends up to the southern tip of the upper Kuttanad region — Pandalam. The recurring floods and the organic farming methods followed in the region, in turn, helped raise the crop’s quality in terms of sweetness,” he says.
The region was stripped of its agricultural legacy since the late 1980s with the Gulf boom. “This caused a rise in land value and pushed up the labour cost. With the decrease in crop area, the crushing season of the two sugar mills, which had operated here, dwindled to just a few weeks from 120 days a year. Eventually, both the crop and the industry ceased to exist,” he adds.
