Assam Takes The Spice Route

By Samudra Gupta Kashyap

Assam has drawn up an ambitious plan to step up its production of spices in the current financial year. While the state has been traditionally growing spices in an estimated area of 92,000 hectares, an action plan approved by the Central government for 2010-11 has set a target of increasing spices cultivation area by 2,300 hectares.

“Our farmers have been growing a variety of spices, among which ginger, turmeric, coriander and chilli have been the most common ones. But, going by the market trends, our department has decided to focus on four crops — black pepper, turmeric, ginger, chilli — during the current year,” said Pramila Rani Brahma, Agriculture Minister.

With the state agriculture department swinging into action, the target is to cover an additional 1,000 hectares for turmeric, 500 hectares each for black pepper and ginger, and 300 hectares for chilli. Last year, the state had produced 1.03 metric tonnes of ginger in 15,210 hectares, while the turmeric output was roughly 10,500 metric tonnes in an estimated area of 14,500 hectares. The output of black pepper, which is yet to pick up as an attractive cash crop among farmers, was a little over 5,000 tonnes in an area of 3,400 hectares.

“The government has announced an attractive incentive for farmers who would take up cultivation of these four crops under Mini Mission II of the Horticulture Technology Mission. Accordingly, those who grow black pepper as a new crop will now get a cash assistance of Rs 30,000 per hectare, while those taking up cultivation of chilli, turmeric and ginger will get Rs 18,750 per hectare,” said Harsha Jyoti Baruah, OSD, agriculture department.

The state agriculture department has also identified certain districts where additional cultivation of these four crops is being taken up. While Jorhat, Sivasagar, Dibrugarh and Karimganj have been identified for black pepper, Dhubri, Chirang, Golaghat, Lakhimpur and Karbi Anglong are the districts where 500 hectares have been identified for fresh cultivation of ginger. Ten districts have been identified for taking up turmeric cultivation in 1,000 additional hectares, Baruah informed.

Baruah said a couple of villages in Jorhat and Lakhimpur districts have been identified as “black pepper village” in view of the enthusiasm shown by the farmers. “Almost every family has started growing black pepper in these two districts. While traditionally Assamese families were using betel nut trees for the pepper vines, people have now started planting pepper beside jackfruit and other trees that have branches,” he said.

The state agriculture department has also eyed the 66,000-hectare area currently under betel nut plantation for extending black pepper cultivation in the years to come. “Right now about 50 per cent of the betel palms already have betel leaf vines on them. But even if we can get half of the remaining 50 per cent for black pepper in the next five or 10 years, spices production in Assam will take a huge leap forward,” said Baruah.

Interestingly, a number of tea estates have also taken up black pepper as an additional crop. “These are outside the purview of the state agriculture department. But while tea estates are utilising shade trees in the tea gardens for black pepper as a bonus crop, the state spices output has also received an extra boost,” he pointed out.

While it was the erstwhile Tata Tea Ltd that took the lead in this respect, more and more tea companies are looking at black pepper as an additional crop.

Though Assam is not known to be a major spices producing state, the productivity of spices here is much above the national average. While the present all-India average is 1,617 kg per hectare, in Assam it is 2,490 kg. Haryana tops the list with an average productivity of 6,300 kg per hectare. When it comes to ginger, Assam’s productivity at 6.8 tonnes per hectare is almost double that of the national average of 3.5 tonnes.