Kerala rubber farmers in crisis

Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy today said that steps would be taken to help rubber farmers who are reeling under crisis due to sharp fall in the price of natural rubber.
He was replying to a calling attention motion moved by government Chief Whip, P C George in the assembly on the need to take steps to solve the crisis.
Chandy said the government was committed to the interests of rubber farmers and was fully aware of the crisis faced by them.
Price of natural rubber was determined by international market price, he said, adding, international price was on the decrease recently. The price of a kilogram of natural rubber had decreased from Rs.245 in 2011 to Rs.144 at present, he said.

However, there was no change in the cost of production of rubber which led to crisis in the sector, he said.
Though government took steps to procure rubber from farmers by paying more than Rs two above the domestic daily market price, it could not be implemented as model code of conduct came into effect, he said.

George said the area under rubber cultivation in the state would come to around 6.59 lakh hectares. There were about 11.5 lakh rubber farmers, of whom 10.2 lakh were small and marginal farmers with less than 1.5 acres each, he said.
He alleged that the wrong import policy of the Centre had aggravated the free fall of natural rubber price in the country.

He said the Centre allowed import of 3.27 lakh tonnes of natural rubber in the last financial year though the rubber production in the country was nine lakh tonnes.
The annual requirement of natural rubber in the country was 9.70 lakh tonnes, he pointed out.