‘Madura malli’ yield high, ryots rue low income

MADURAI: It has become a problem of plenty for ‘Madura Malli’ (jasmine) farmers as prices are seeing a drastic drop amidst a rise in yield.

Jasmine yield has increased phenomenally after the end of cold weather and the arrival of summer, but higher supply means lesser price as farmers can’t store the flower waiting for better times, despite having five perfume making units in Nilakottai alone.

During intense cold weather in January this year, the price of jasmine rose to a maximum of Rs 5,000 a kilo, but it has steadily declined to Rs 200 a kilo after the arrival of summer, M Thangamani, a jasmine farmer from Kalyanipatti village in Usilampatti, told DT Next. Such a sharp drop in price is a crisis farmers always face until the arrival of Panguni and Chithirai, he added.

Thangamani said that the yield has increased to 30 or 40 kilos for one acre of jasmine farm as against five to six kilos during the winter. This doesn’t help farmers as expenditure of Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,00 on a jasmine farm can’t be reduced in any manner. Voice of the jasmine farmers goes unheard as they are the only ones without an association to fight for the needs and demands, Thangamani said. Due to the lack of representation of the jasmine farmers, we could not determine a fair and steady market price, he said.

Another farmer from the same village, K Kumar, said that jasmine prices at the procurement point remain volatile as it depends on the timings of the day. It usually fetches Rs 300 a kilo at 9 am, and nosedives to as low as Rs 100 in evening hours, as farmers have to sell it off not to lose the yield to wilting.

According to Pookadai Ramachandran, a vendor for Nilakottai wholesale flower market, the heavy arrival of jasmine resulted in the sharp drop in price. During winter months, only about 300 to 400 kilos of jasmine flowers landed in Nilakottai market daily, but now it has witnessed a manifold increase of about six to seven tonnes a day, he added.