Western Producer reporter Mary MacArthur continues her travels across India, exploring the land many say could become the next big market for Canadian farmers.
ALLEPPEY, Kerala – With waving palm trees, lush forests and ultra modern cities, the southern Indian state of Kerala can seem like a tropical paradise.
It’s also home to the “Venice of India.”
With 2,000 kilometres of natural tributaries, backwaters and streams, the Punnamada River near the small town of Alleppey has become a tourist destination with 1,000 overnight houseboats, hundreds of day cruisers and small canoes taking tourists through the waterways.
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On the opposite side of the natural berms in the river highways, 29,000 acres of Kerala’s 300,000 acres of rice paddies are cultivated. It’s the only place in the world where rice is grown below sea level.
The number of rice paddies in the state has been declining and Kerala now imports more than half of its rice.
In 2005, rice paddy production was on about 260,000 acres, a 60 percent drop from the 750,000 acres of rice paddies in the 1960s.
Poor rice prices and poor profits have shifted production out of rice to other agricultural enterprises including rubber, cardamom, palm, coconut and tourism.
The narrow berms that separate the rice paddies and the river canals are where thousands of villagers live, eat, wash, pray and go to school.
The berms range from one metre to 50 metres wide. Some villagers step out of their front door into water, while others have a few more metres available for a wider house, a cow, goats or chickens.
Life here revolves around the river. Water taxis take children to school and families across the river to stores, or churches.
Most of the families work in their one-acre sized rice paddies behind the houses. Like other parts of rural India, a labour shortage has created problems for farmers.
Small tracked, self-propelled rice harvesting combines and stationary threshing machines help deal with the labour shortage, but fertilizer is still spread by hand and the paddies are hand-weeded.
When not working in the paddies, many family members catch fish, prawns or mussels to sell and eat
Men paddle their long, narrow, wooden canoes up the river to deliver milk or palm thatch for repairing houseboats.
Throughout the year, families dig mud from the river to patch their houses, shore up their narrow berms, or build blockades against the river during the rainy season.
Each morning and night families step into the river to bathe, brush their teeth, wash their dishes or scrub their clothes. Standing knee deep in water, the women scrub the clothes then bash them on the rocks, rinse, bash, scrub, bash and rinse.
Sitting between modest houses are large, new, brightly painted ones. These were paid for with money made in the Persian Gulf. In almost every family, at least one member works in the Persian Gulf and sends money home.
