Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
production to collapse in unprecedented magnitude in several areas of the
state. Many scientists are currently convinced that this fungal epidemic
occurred as a result of the disturbance in the natural equilibrium of soils
by the constant application of chemicals. Their theory is that pesticides
and fertilizers killed off useful soil-
dwelling microorganisms, including
another fungus, trichoderma, a natural enemy to phytophthora. The ab-
sence of trichoderma allowed pepper wilt to proliferate without impedi-
ment.53 Phytophthora has caused losses equivalent to two thousand tons
of pepper per year, valued at several million dollars annually.54
To make things worse, in the late 1990s to early 2000s, pepper prices de-
clined worldwide and especially in India, because free trade agreements
promoted pepper production in and trade with other Asian countries,
such as Vietnam.55 W hereas pepper sold for 260 rupees per kilogram on
average in 2000 in Kerala, its price dropped to 78 rupees per kilogram in
2004.56 Pepper was no longer a viable source of income for farmers.
The combination of the Green Revolution and the commercial glo-
balization of agriculture affected Kerala's coffee growers as well. The
state's farmers frequently intercrop their pepper with coffee. Pepper grows
as a vine on shade-producing trees, and coffee bushes grow underneath
(fig. 1). British planters introduced coffee into Kerala in the 1800s, and
area farmers, finding that coffee fared well in the state's humid climate,
continued to plant it years after independence.57 The state government
also encouraged coffee cultivation. As a result, Kerala is now the second
largest producer of coffee in India after Karnataka, a neighboring state.
At the same time that Kerala's pepper production was reeling from the
phytophthora outbreak in the 1990s, coffee yields also started to decline
due to similar factors, including pestilence and weakened soils caused by
farming practices based in chemicals. Coffee farmers began earning less
revenue from their bushes, further undermining already tenuous house-
hold finances.58
Compounding this difficult situation, in the 1990s the international
price for coffee declined. Researchers pinpoint the origin of this “coffee
crisis” in the collapse of the 1989 International Coffee Agreement (ICA),
which had regulated stocks and quotas of coffee production in participat-
