Jorhat, India: Priya Ram Dawara planted 60 saplings on six hectares (1.2 acres) of farmland in Mohara village, Jorhat district, Assam state, northeastern India.
The 65-year-old farmer, who grows rice and pickled vegetables, started planting the trees last September after receiving a guarantee of high yields from two state agriculture department officials. It takes four years for the plants to bear fruit, and he says it’s worth the wait.
Reason: The promise of higher returns.
Dawara told Al Jazeera that growing rice yields around 40,000 rupees ($478) a year, a “very small” sum in this regard due to rising inflation. “Government officials assure me that it will double my performance,” he told Al Jazeera, apparently excited about his new culture.
There are about 1200 farmers in Assam who are dedicated to growing dandi as a dream to increase their income.
High demand for edible oils
In 2014, the newly elected Narendra Modi government set up the National Mission for Oilseeds and Palm Oil (NMOOP) with the aim of making India self-sufficient in edible oils. In 2021, it was renamed Missão Nacional de Óleos Comestíveis-Óleo de Palma and the government announced an investment of Rs 110.4 billion (US$1.32 billion).
India is the world’s largest importer of edible oils. In the twelve months from November 2022 to October 2023, we imported 16.47 million tonnes of edible oil, including 10 million tonnes of palm oil. This was higher than the previous year’s imports of 14.19 million tonnes and 8 million tonnes, respectively. Palm oil is used in a variety of packaged foods, such as flavourings, cosmetics, beverages and other products.
Dhandi is currently cultivated in some southern Indian states, including Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and Karnataka, and the Modi government has decided to expand production to the northeastern region of the country, including Assam.
Assam initially allocated about 1,000 hectares (2,741 acres) of agricultural land for dendi cultivation. Recognizing its enormous potential, the Indian Oil Palm Research Institute in 2014 identified a total area of 375,428 hectares (927,703 acres) suitable for cultivation.
However, despite the apparent search for palm oil and a decade of effort, things are not going as planned in Assam. One major problem is that there are still no processing facilities to process the fruit in the neighbouring states of Mizoram and Andhra Pradesh. The delays in this process and the resulting losses will hamper farmers who were the first to adopt the practice.
“disappointed hopes”
Josmi Rabha, 54, a farmer in Daridori village, Goalpara district, is one of them. He planted 65 saplings on one hectare (2.5 acres) of his farm in 2016 with the promise of high returns.
“I spent about Rs 100,000 ($1,200) to build a fence to protect the animals from harm, and I also installed a pump to irrigate the groundwater,” Jozmi told Al Jazeera.
“The plants will start bearing fruit in 2021. We expect high yields. But all our hopes were dashed when we couldn’t find any market to sell them to, because we didn’t see anything to buy from us,” said Guzme.
The fruit starts rotting if not processed within three days, yet middlemen, aware of the dilemma, are offering low prices. “The absence of an oil processing plant in Assam has practically wiped out our business,” he said, adding that there were now problems getting money to remove the plants from his land.
Rabha's son, Debajyoti Rabha, 34, a teacher at a local school, also entered the business to supplement the family income, but the results were devastating.
“The Dendizeru culture is a culture that consumes a lot of water and kills all other cultures,” said Dibiajyoti, who agreed with the Dendizeru at the suggestion of government officials. “We are planning to remove palm oil from our fields, but our branches are resistant and we will have to hire additional workers to do so. This has been a detrimental situation for us,” he added.
He added that previously there were 70 farmers in the village who joined the idea of growing firewood, but now there are only 10 left, because the others will all give up.
Pratul Chandra Rabha, 40, another farmer in the same village, also blamed the low prices offered by the programmes for losing interest in two farmers.
There is no minimum support price set by the government and middlemen are offering Rs 6 ($0.072) per kg of the fruit, much lower than the asking price of Rs 15-16 ($0.19) per kg.
“Each tree produces between 15 and 20 kilograms of fruit in a period of 20 days, but where are the buyers? No more planting or abandoning palm trees,” Rabha told Al Jazeera.
Deepak Kumar Pathak, assistant director of the agriculture department in Goalpara, admitted or denied the participation of two farmers in the farm area which has come down to the target of 700-800 hectares (1,730-1,977 acres) from 1,511 hectares (3,734 acres) in 2014.
“Lack of adequate transportation of goods to processing units and involvement of middlemen appears to be the main reason behind the decline,” Pathak said.
New players
Last August, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced that the state government, in partnership with yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Foods Limited (PFL), had started a large-scale tree plantation project on 375,000 hectares (927,000 acres) of controlled land. The plantation, like Patanjali, will operate on 60,300 hectares (149,005 acres) of land. Other companies that have expressed interest include 3F, Godrej Agrovet and KE Cultivation Pvt Limited.
Under this plan, the Olive Growers Association is planting oil palm seedlings in 10 and 19 government nurseries and distributing them free of charge to farmers.
Mitu Baishia, in charge of the PFL nursery in Jorhat district, told Al Jazeera that she had distributed 40,000 saplings to 400 farmers in six districts since last September.
“We produce 200,000 seedlings a year and have the capacity to double that amount,” he said. “The seedlings are delivered to farmers absolutely free of charge and they are also given technical guidance.” The factories are heavily subsidized by the state and PFL hopes to make a profit when it sells palm oil soon.
PFL also said it would open two factories to process palm fruit, obtain the oil and check that there were enough suppliers for it.
Neelum Baruah, field officer of PFL, said the company is distributing mustard to thousands of farmers to encourage consortium farming so that they do not incur losses during the palm oil production period. “We are distributing free seedlings to farmers and the market linkage problem will be solved once the production starts in large quantities because we cannot set up a processing unit now,” he said.
Recently, when Farmer Dawara, still excited about the prospect of high returns from bush farming, returned to his mud hut, he said he had not been concerned about the negative experiences of farmers in Gole, so he had not gone into business before.
Eli said his community is affected by water problems due to the failure of Chuvas in Goalpara. “Here we have no problems with the PFA guarantee that we will double our income when the trees start bearing fruit. We expect better returns,” he said.
