Kerala, India: ‘the land can no longer support us’

By Grace Boyle Mutai came to Kerala, to this farm, on January 21st, 1951. He was eleven years old then, and has lived here ever since. He’s dark-skinned, white-haired and wearing a bright blue check lunghi [a wrap-around piece of material worn as a skirt], as all the farmers here wear. A granddad vest, a shirt and an excellent pair of 1980’s NHS-style bifocals: on paper he’s not too dissimilar from people I used to know in Shoreditch. In 1966 he married a girl called Mariakkutty and these few acres of land have been their livelihood through forty-three years of marriage and five children. When the first agricultural settlers came here in the fifties, they razed the land of forest and planted lemongrass oil seeds that they had bought with them. The initially small-scale production was fruitful in the rich biodiversity of Wayanad, and the farms grew. Rather than planting a variety of crops for food, the farmers chased the money they could make from exporting cash crops such as pepper, coffee and plantain. Now the combination of years of monocrops, coupled with the rising temperatures and reduced rainfall caused by climate change has made the unthinkable a reality: the fertile lands of Wayanad are going dry. … “Then three years ago the price of coffee fell too, and on top of that our yields reduced: the lack of rainfall has starved the crops. That’s when the farmers had to start borrowing money – nearly 90% of the people here have taken out loans.” … “The land is so hard these days that it is unturnable in the summer season, and our ginger grows as little stubs where it should be two foot high,” she says. “This year again there is much less rain. Look –“ She gestures out of the open door, when a thin drizzle is falling on the lawn. “You can see out there it is limited again. Five years ago we had to take a loan from the bank to install an irrigation system to artificially water the coffee plants. We never had such problems before.” … “One of my neighbours [killed himself],” remembers Mutai. “Abraham. He had three children; two daughters whose marriages he needed to pay dowries for. Three years ago there was a drought, and the price of pepper dropped to Rs. 6,000 [per quintal]. They couldn’t exist on the money they made. “He was sixty when he committed suicide. The Government writes off the debts of dead people, so the only way for a family to survive is if one dies.” …