For a few Acres more

As agricultural land disappears in Kerala, the vast majority of small land-holders and farm-workers are hit the hardest

Jeemon Jacob Thiruvananthapuram

Seven year ago, Joseph Varghese of Pulpally village in Wayanad district of Kerala was a 'respected' landlord. His family owned five acres of land on which he cultivated pepper and coffee. His children studied in nearby private schools and he owned an SUV. Several people from the nearby tribal communities were working on his farms.

Today, he works as a coolie in Karnataka for a living. He sold his farms to repay debts and vanished with his family from the village. His family lives in a rented house. “Sometimes I felt that suicide was a better option for me. Life is too hard. The only reason I held back is because of my two daughters,” he says.

P Krishnaprasad, who represents Sultan Bathery in the Kerala legislative assembly, says thousands of farmers in his division have a similar story to tell. “More than 1,500 farmer suicides were reported since 1999. The maximum number of suicides in Kerala took place in Wayanad district where the major crops (coffee and pepper) have suffered severe price falls. According to official data, there were 321 suicides in this district, but the real number must be above 500,” he explains. He claims that farmer suicides in Wayanad has slowed down because the Left government has taken initiatives for effective relief operations.

A national sample survey on land distribution has revealed that 76.3 per cent of the Kerala population own 00.00-00.99 acres of land per household. This comes to merely 21 per cent of the total land in Kerala, while 9.3 per cent of the population owns a whopping 54.2 per cent of the land. Clearly, land reforms in Kerala has only happened at a superficial level. The old feudal system was replaced by a new bunch of feudal lords who hold political clout.

Krishnaprasad, state committee member of Communist Party of India - Marxist (CPI-M), worked with farmers and agricultural labourers in Wayanad before becoming an MLA. He calls these figures as politically motivated statistics. “Land reforms put an end to tenant culture promoted by feudal lords in Kerala and led to a social revolution,” he says. According to him, among the 1.7 million hectares of cultivable land, 1.2 million hectares belong to small farmers who hold less than five acres. 

Unfortunately, land reforms did not increase agricultural production or rural employment. One of the most visible results of land reforms was the extreme fragmentation of land, the oft-cited reason for making agriculture a low-profit venture. Many new landlords realised that they could not make a living out of agriculture and turned to less labour-intensive crops like rubber and coconut. Later, they displayed a tendency to leave their land fallow. The result was a drastic fall in employment in the agricultural sector.

Workers began to migrate to non-agricultural sectors, especially to satisfy the demand caused by large-scale construction activities. In the early 1980s, the Gulf boom pushed up land prices in the state. The neo-rich started buying land for constructing palatial concrete bungalows. Many agriculture labourers shifted to the construction sector as it offered them better wages and employment opportunities.

Back in 1967, paddy cultivation covered more than 12 lakh hectares of land in Kerala. The area has now dwindled to around three lakh hectares which led to shortage of food grains.

The fall in prices of cash crops complicated the situation further as many small farmers opted for vanilla cultivation to fetch better profits in agriculture. “Earlier, Kerala was practicing mixed crop cultivation. If one crop failed, other crops could support the farmers. Somewhere, we lost this mechanism and experimented with cocoa and vanilla to make easy profits in agriculture,” says Jaffrey Varghese, a young farmer in Ankamaly. Varghese lost more than Rs seven lakh when he switched from rubber to vanilla.

Liberalisation and the boom in IT and tourism changed land use even further in Kerala. Land was in great demand and lots of NRIs wanted to invest in land. “When banks were offering low interests, investing in land became lucrative. Most people invested in land and never took it for cultivation,” says Varghese Manjaly, one such investor. According to him, the majority of people who invested in land profited heavily. “It's true that the concept is creating a neo-rich class much faster than any other industry. But the marginalised and poor have no place in such a society,” he argues.

PT John, who works with marginal farmers in Wayanad, points out that even the communist government was not protecting farmers' interests. “Techno parks, smart cities, new airports, shopping malls and luxury hotels are priority areas of the developmental agenda. In such a situation, who will think of the interests of the small landholders?” he asks.