Chapter – 4 ECONOMIC VIABILITY OF PADDY CULTIVATION IN RAMANKARI VILLAGE As
rational producers, area allocation decisions of farmers are always guided by the relative profitability of various crops that can be cultivated in their fields. Profitability in turn is a function of both cultivation costs and farm level prices agricultural products.
Over the past several years, the successful operation of the public distribution system in the state has acted as a price stabilizing factor of food articles and thereby it has dampened down the rate of increase in the prices of food crops in general and that of rice in particular. The relatively lower growth rates in paddy prices till the late nineties had encouraged the farmers in the state to reallocate their fields for the cultivation of more remunerative cash crops. Unlike the major rice producing areas in the state with the exception of the kole
lands in Thrissur district, the low lying kayal lands cannot be used to cultivate the alternative cash crops in a large scale. Even though it is technically possible to cultivate garden crops after filling the low lying paddy lands with soil or mud and thereby bringing on its
elevation higher than the MSL, it involves huge investments and is against the provisions of the Kerala Land Utilisation Act of 1970. Past experiences show that whenever paddy prices had gone up and profitability
of the crop was high,
farmers in Kuttanad were induced to enhance rice production either by bringing more lands under plough or by increasing crop intensity. Land reclamation activities in Kuttanad reached its peak level during the first world war period when paddy prices increased manifold. Prior to the war years farmers in this region used to sow their fields once in three or more years. The better prospects of getting abnormal profits at that time prompted almost all of the cultivators of kayal lands to resort to a system of annual cropping. However, during the postwar years when paddy cultivation became uneconomical they relapsed to the earlier system. Again during the second world war paddy prices soared up and cultivation costs declined due to the widespread use of electric pumps. Profitability of the crop increased and it resulted in the reclamation of kayal lands once again.
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Thomas PM Agricultural performance in Kerala in BA Prakash(ed),
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