Andhra Pradesh

Oil palm farmers face ‘tall’ problem

TADIKALAPUDI (WEST GODAVARI DIST): The increasing height of oil palm plantations worries Alla Rama Swamy, a small farmer from this upland village in West Godavari district.

Most of the plantations in his field have registered an abnormal height up to 30 feet.

“More the height in plantations, more the risk of their uprooting during the natural calamities and also more the problems relating to harvesting,” says Rama Swamy, who raised oil palm in a joint plot of five acres along with his three brothers.

“Twelve out of 100 plantations in my plot got uprooted due to heavy gales accompanied by cyclone recently,” he bemoans.

According to information, excessive tallness has been reported in certain species of oil palm plantations supplied by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) in the early 90s in West Godavari, East Godavari and Krishna districts.

It may be recalled that the Department of Biotechnology promoted oil palm cultivation in 1,050 acres in the three districts by supplying seedlings on trial basis to analyse the prospects of oil palm cultivation in the coastal region. Over application of nitrogen-based fertilizers, supply of tall varieties by DBT, among others, are said to be the factors for the incidence of higher tallness in oil palm in these areas.

E.V.K. Kishore, who undertook oil palm cultivation in 50 acres, says the tallness in plantations consumes more labour.

He said 60-70 plantations require one worker for harvesting. In rainy season, one worker could cut the fruit bunches in not more than an acre as the trunk was slippery”, he adds.

Guduru Venkata Sivaprasad, an engineer-turned farmer, attributes the plight of farmers caused by excessive tallness of plantations to the alleged lack of motivation among the scientists at the National Research Centre (NRC) for Oil Palm located in the district in making a breakthrough in developing dwarf varieties.

“The research on dwarf varieties failed to reach the land from the NRC labs even a decade after its foundation,” he criticized. Mr. Prasad raised oil palm in five acres on which he incurs Rs 10,000 towards labour cost every year for harvesting only.

“Had my plantations been shorter, the cost of labour would have been much lesser,” he said. He observed that the demand for labour was so severe that he had to shell out Rs 7,000 to each of his workers in advance. Meanwhile, the growers seek insurance for their plantations as they were susceptible to uprooting during calamities in view of their excessive height.

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