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Idukky farmers worm their way back to silk cultivation

E-Tex Staff, Thiruvanathapuram

Cocoon-buyback guarantee has Idukky - the plantation foothills of Kerala - pulling out from its tea, sugarcane and eucalyptus crop-mix, to worm its way back to silk cultivation. After a price-shock in 1999, as bad as 20 per cent below the production costs, one may recall that Kerala farmers had scrambled away from the mulberry bush in a hurry.

This time, Serifed (state’s sericulture promotional body) has offered buyback at assured prices of Rs 150 per kilo. It has spread out technical and financial assistance to Kudumbasree (the women self-help group outfit in Kerala) to step into the vacuum left by the poor price-realisation of tea and coffee. “Earlier we had to clear our cocoon stocks at Karnataka and Tamil Nadu at Rs 28 to Rs 30 per kilo,” says Sheela Jose, a trained mulberry farmer. “As a highly family labour-intensive occupation, the letdown was also as much psychological last time. By now, the technology and market have changed for the better,” she adds. But the new buy-back lure has been so catchy that in across seven panchayats in Idukky, Kudumbasree has taken up a project for mulberry breeding in 1000 acres at one go. Under a special Swarna Jayanthi Grama Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY), the project invests Rs 30 crore in sericulture with state contributing 50 per cent. High-yielding mulberry cuttings, saplings and bivoltine silk work eggs are supplied.

Central Silk Board is also enthused by the quality of bivoltine cocoons produced in the Kerala climate.

“In the ongoing financial, National Silkworm Seed Project (NSSP) under CSB targets to get ISO certification for silkworm seed production centre in Kerala,” says CSB member secretary P Joy Ommen. India’s NSSP is the first Asian organisation to get ISO in silkworm seed production. Contrary to the traditional export-led plantation crops that the Kerala farmer is used to, the emerging crop preference could give an import-substitution effect to the state’s Rs 1000-crore annual silk consumption economy.

According to Serifed managing director, Mr D Prashant, in the last two years, growing silk production within Kerala has hammered down the annual turnover of cross-border silk traders to as low as Rs 700 crore. “But growing quality and brand assure that the product need not be fully dependent on domestic demand,” he says. Serifed has even procured an export licence estimating a sudden surge in demand for Kerala silk, especially in Gulf market. Demand for silk in the domestic market is estimated to be to the tune of 22,000 tonnes per annum. Actual production is only around of 16,000 tonnes. India is importing the rest from advanced silk producing countries like China.