The Marayur landscape, a favourite of filmmakers due to its enchanting sugar cane fields, is now dotted with overgrown sugar canes and flowers sprouting from them.
Acute shortage of skilled labour, which used to be mostly from Tamil Nadu, has hit harvesting of the crop since April and the subsequent production of the famed jaggery that flaunts the Geographical Indication (GI) tag.
Over 600 ha of land in Marayur and Kanthallur villages cultivate sugar cane for producing Marayur jaggery in household units. The farmers here depend on labourers from Tamil Nadu, and since the lockdown was announced, the labourers have stopped coming, says Selvin Mariyappan, a farmer and chief of the Marayur Hills Agriculture Development Society (MHADS), one of the three authorised agencies to market Marayur jaggery.
The harvesting is usually done in rotation in the farms, and if one farm is harvested, the nearby farm is also ready for harvest. This ensures that there is jaggery production throughout the year in Marayur.
But the present crisis has hit the rotating system of harvesting and farms that were to be harvested in April still remain untouched, says Mr Mariyappan. “If rotation is broken, the crops in a year are lost,” he adds.
Once overgrown, the sugar canes will not yield juice required to make the jaggery. Dull red tissues develop on the canes and the juice gets diverted for flowering. This results in drop in production, as is the situation now. From April onwards, the production per week has dropped from 14 tonne to below four tonne. The rains that began four days ago has done further damage.
Arogyasami, a farmer, says his field now has overgrown sugar canes that have begun flowering. The price of Marayur jaggery has also dropped and is around ₹65 now. “It does not fetch much profit,” he adds.
Marayur Agriculture officer Priya Peter told The Hindu that the issue was being taken up with the authorities. However, in the present COVID-19 crisis, it is not advisable to seek labour from Tamil Nadu.
According to her, if the production of Marayur jaggery drops, there is a chance of the commodity arriving from Tamil Nadu that could be marketed as ‘Marayur jaggery’ though there is not much evidence to prove this.
To avoid all such situation, the need of the hour will be a home-grown solution.
