India is fast losing its status as a leading producer and exporter of pepper, also known as "black gold", as production and cultivated area of this spice variety have dwindled.
Grown mostly on the slopes of Western Ghats in Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, cultivation base of pepper has come down sharply in the last decade hitting production and export. According to pepper growers and traders, factors ranging from vagaries of climate to afflictions wilting pepper vines, contributed to fall in production and shrinkage of cultivated area.
Statistics of the International Pepper Community (IPC) show the area under pepper cultivation in India dwindled from 218,670 hectares in 2001 to 182,000 hectares in 2010. In contrast, the cultivation base and production in countries like Vietnam and China increased during the period, giving stiff competition to India.
With the cultivated area shrinking steadily in India, pepper production also fell to 50,000 tons by 2010 from 79,000 ten years ago. In Kerala alone, area under pepper cultivation fell from 172,182 Ha to 85,335 Ha in a single year from 2010-11 and production plummeted to 37989 tons from 45267 tonnes, according to the state's Economic Review.
According to Spices Board, export of Indian pepper in 2012-13 came down by 40 per cent compared to the previous year. While the country shipped 26,700 tonnes of pepper in 2011-12, exports fell to 16,000 tonnes in 2012-13. Ironically, this happened in a year when the export of spices from India marked a record 22 per cent growth crossing Rs 10,000 crore mark as per the Spices Board figures.
"This certainly is a worrying trend, which requires some urgent measures to support farmers. We have certain schemes for pepper under the National Horticulture Mission," a Spices Board official said. According to farmers, who mostly grow pepper as an inter- crop, production suffered from afflictions like root-wilt and slow-wilt and also price fluctuation, forcing them to abandon the enterprise in prime pepper areas like Wayanad and Idukki.
According to market analysts, despite the reputation for its high quality, Indian pepper has been facing stiff competition from countries like Vietnam where cultivation is taken up on commercial scale and the inputs, including labour, are cheaper.
"It is time that we took some pro-active steps like promotion of pepper as a mono crop by providing institutional support to farmers," said Philip Kuruvilla, chairman of World Space Organisation, a platform for all stakeholders of the spice industry from producer to processor. "It is true that pepper has been grown as an inter-crop in Kerala. But strategic shift is necessary to arrest the downtrend," Kurivilla said. Pushing high value produce like organically grown pepper could also boost export, he said.
"We have to identify new areas for increasing the cultivation base and promote good farming practices like organic method. But this would require institutional support for farmers in the interim period ," he said. According to Spices Board, distribution of disease- resistant planting material is the thrust of the rejuvenation project. "Many of the indigenous varieties of pepper vines conducive to our geographical and climatic conditions have disappeared over the decades.The present ones are prone to be easily afflicted by the diseases. So, it is important to make available planting material to the farmers," Spices Board sources said.
