Pathways for Climate Resilient Livelihoods: The Case of a Large Cardamom Farming in the Dzongu Valley of the Tista River Basin, Sikkim Himalaya

Abstract

Sikkim is primarily a rural and agricultural economy, where over 60 % of its population is directly engaged in agriculture. Principal food crops cultured in the region include maize, paddy, barley, millet, wheat, buck wheat, beans etc. Important cash crops are cardamom, ginger, potato, soybean, fruit crops and vegetables etc. Large cardamom is raised on commercial basis and is exported both within and outside the country. In fact, Sikkim has the largest area and the highest production of large cardamom in India. It is a foreign exchange earner crop of Sikkim. The state has limited industrial potential due to its geologic and geomorphic constraints. Large cardamom farming has been suffering from decline in production and gradual drying and subsequent death of the plant in the last 1–1.5 decades.

There has been a steady decline in the yield of large cardamom over the years. One of the important factors of declining yield is ascribed to old age of cardamom bushes. A section of the policy makers and farmers also believe that monoculture of cardamom plants in the same fields for generations, is perhaps, an added cause of declining productivity of the cardamom. However, a further more important and serious factor in this regard has been the destruction of cardamom orchards by viral diseases in recent years. There are increasing warnings from the scientists, policy makers and people on field that change in temperature and rainfall pattern in the region over last many years could be the potential factors of the disease spreading viruses and subsequent destruction and declining productivity of large cardamom plantations across Sikkim.