Tapioca, rich in carbohydrate, used to be the stable food for many families during my childhood. It was easy to cultivate in the kitchen gardena and each plant would yield enough food for a family in five months.
Later, rice, wheat and millets replaced the regular use of this starchy food. In the recent years Tapioca is in demand outside Kerala and in the middle eastern countries.
Tapioca is consumed after boiling or cooking with coconut along with some curry preferably fish curry.
The chips made out of tapioca is a favourite snack. Usually the tapioca was converted into chips after boiling and drying it in the sun for use during the monsoon season. The dried tapioca can be soaked in water and cooked with lentils, which used to be called as tapioca biriyani.
During my childhood tapioca was not sold as most families would have their own from their neighbours. Now it is available in vegetable shops.
Tapioca and pine apple plantations are commonly seen in land areas, which were earlier rice fields .
The food habits have changed; the land use has changed; the cost has gone up for the produce1
The bottom line is that the farmers do not benefit as the cost of production has gone up. I remember that the daily wage for an adult was 20 rupees during my childhood, which is now nearing 1000 rupees. The farmers who use labourers to till their land woeful end up in debt unless they have mechanised the farming.
So in the rural setting agricultural farming is being replaced by poultry farming, cattle farming, etc.
While farming was a trans-generational activity in a family in my childhood, it is now confined to the senior members in the family as their children have moved on to get employed for better remuneration.
So agricultural farming is at a cross road in many parts of India!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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