Productivity and Profitability of Pepper in India

Abstract

Black pepper is one of the most important and earliest known spices in the world. Both in terms of area and production of pepper, India occupies leading places among the major pepper producing countries in the world. Pepper is a native product of the southern Indian coast. India had long dominated the production of pepper and is still renowned for producing the highest quality of pepper in Tellichery and other regions of Malabar. In India, Kerala has the monopoly of pepper production. Kerala occupies around 91 to 97 per cent of area and production of pepper in India. Though the open trade regime has resulted in the production of pepper mostly for the world market, India's share in total world production of pepper has fluctuated from 12 to 21 per cent between 1970 and 2005 against the increasing and declining shares of Indonesia and Malaysia respectively. The Productivity of pepper in India is low (317 kgs/hec.) due to lack of awareness of improved varieties and poor management practices adopted in the pepper plantations. The fact that pepper is such an important cash crop for a large number of relatively poor small holders has led Governments to intervene in the pepper market in several ways of development.