@xylene…
well that is going to be the future… the labor cost are rising faster than the productivity.. hence sooner or later it might be cheaper to import rather than produce.
BTW the coconut article link that you provided is 9 years old. I am sure that farmers would have recovered from that by now.

I cant comment on that I am not sure about it, I would talk to ma Dad about this.
its true that the prices were so high that there are ppl who put electric fences, put a round the clock security.. etc
Idont think its a oversupply that created the issue. there is a huge market for vanilla in the european countries and the US. However in India we still stick to artificial essence, one reason would be the price.
Its mainly because of the companies who started buying it from the farmers lowered the prices. They were selling it for huge profits in the international market.

RUBBER is a magical word now, the prices have struck record high few weeks ago and is around 126/kg now.
Thats still profitable, owing to less maintenance and labour. But there is a huge investment as we have to wait for 6 years for the rubber to fully grow.
About coconuts, it was badly hit by a disease.. that many lost their plantation.
http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/ie/daily/19991122/ige22023.html

also the state is alternatively ruled by the CPI, so the unions are strong and they charge the farmer more than 5Rs to climb a tree. I heard its around 10Rs now. (I am not sure bcoz we dont have a cocunut plantation) he will also take a percentage of coconuts home + other benefits. The returns are less aswell.

The other thing wud be rice. The farmers lost out in this aswell becacause of labour problems. The unions are very strong that ultimately farmer would have to find other sources of income to pay them off. So they are now filling all the paddy with mud and selling the land off. This is one reason for the floods.

Much of the problems are due to bad government and more importantly the UNIONS.
Now a minister in Kerala (CPI) has talked against the much known ‘Nokku kooli’ or ‘charge for simply looking at someone else working’. How this works is, unions have their own designated areas where ONLY they can unload/load goods. So even if I want to unload/load goods in my property I can with my labourers, but will have to pay the union their charge.

Many of them end up paying because those guys are goondas and will threaten to beat up the other labourers. Also the police will be on their side as their party will be ruling the state.

All the thugs and hooligans made Kerala a consumer state. We get rice from TN, AP… vegetables and fruits from TN. Milk from Karnataka. So when the price of Milk in Karnataka increased 2 months ago, it increased in Kerala as well..

Sorry for the long comment.

in 1997, the Madagascar crop was completely destroyed and this encouraged the entrepreneurial Kerelites to mint a fortune. I am told that at that time the profit margins were so high that every farmer would stay awake the whole night and guard the crop. Some even put on electric fences to shock away the thieves.

But during that 1-2 years so many vanilla trees were planted that there was an over-supply.

i don’t know about rubber, but people have started complaining that because of high labor cost even coconut plantations are no longer viable. It sometimes costs more to pluck the coconut then what comes from the sales.

@pr3na..
earlier i also used to think the same, but the shampoo bottle smells totally different from the hair. Plus it is also not even a tenth as much exciting.

//Kerela is a major vanilla growing state//

We had a ‘not so big’ plantation with Vanilla. But then its not profitable for small scale farmers like us coz the price has been brought down by the industrillists who buy it from the farmers.
There is kinda monopoly in the business and they pay very less to the farmers.
So we ended up not pollinating (it has to be maually pollinated as there is no natural pollinator )it this year. Much like cadbury in kerala when they bought down the prices once they convinced the farmers to grow cocoa. The farmers cut every cocoa tree they had after that.
We are happy with Rubber now.
The prices are rising and there is no monopoly. Moreover, the govt also support rubber.

@prax..
There are a couple of stores in Bangalore they keep Jenga, let me know if you cannot find it on ebay/bombay.

Kerela is a major vanilla growing state. But unfortunately people in India still have not developed the taste for it… but there are a couple of boutique ice cream parlors that serve authentic ice cream

vanilla beans ice cream - do you get it here?

well said, true also