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| P.Parameswaran, Thirunelli, Wayanad |
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Though he has not sold a single grain of pepper in the domestic market for the last 16 years, his organically cultivated pepper has been a much-sought item by customers in United Kingdom, among whom is the Royal Family.
48-year-old P.Parameswaran, who owns a 50-acre farm in the remote Thirunelli range of Wayanad, has been experimenting with organic farming for the last 20 years as a way of life. Brought up by a Scottish couple in England, he came back to Kerala in his youth and has since been engaged in farming. “In those days it was not the market that attracted me to organic farming. I always hated the extreme exploitation of nature and chalked out my own ways of farming,” says Parameswaran who is as keen to keep the media glare out of his farm as he is to keep the chemicals away.
His initial years only brought him deep financial trouble and it took long years for him to have a steady income.
In his farm, different crops like pepper, coffee, rice and arecanut coexist with an array of wild flowers, bamboos, medicinal plants etc. Such is his farm’s integration with nature that one would be hard put to demarcate the boundary between his farm and the forest adjoining it.
With the help of his British friends, he has been marketing his Special Wayanad Pepper in the UK through organic foodstuff outlets for the last 10 years. Healthy farming methods have helped him tide over stringent quality control system of UK.
Does he have plans to expand his market, now that more enquiries are coming from Germany and USA? Parameswaran’s answer is an emphatic ‘No’. “ I am not ready to compromise on the quality of my product and cannot squeeze nature according to the increasing demand,” he says. In fact, he has requested the Spices Board not to display his pepper in their brochures lest he be disturbed with more orders.
Courtesy: Jose Kurien, New Indian Express, March 2, 2004
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