Banana growers in Kerala have launched a Banana Farmers Association as a follow-up to the National Banana Festival held last year (2018) in the state by the Centre for Innovation in Science & Social Action (Cissa) - a Non Government Organization.
Cissa since long had been trying to inspire the banana growers to come together to form a common platform.
General Secretary of Cissa, C Suresh Kumar said that cultivation of banana is a household work in Kerala. It is important to mention that a number of cultivators having decades of experience in agricultural techniques came for this festival last year.
Kumar said, “If banana cultivation has survived the devastation of time in the State then the credit must go mainly to the particularly large number of smallholder farmers. But these farmers didn’t have an organisation of their own to make themselves heard”.
Cissa’s main objective has been to remove this gap between the farmers and the mainstream. An agriculture scientist-turned-farmer, Sreekumar, has been elected the 1st president of the association.
Sreekumar said, “Presently, farmers from the vicinity of the capital district are members of the association. And we are looking to reach out to the remaining areas of the State, which incidentally provides the most diverse banana crop & bring more growers under the association’s fold”.
Mr. Suresh Kumar said that Centre for Innovation in Science & Social Action is committed to support entrepreneurs who come forward to explore the vast scope of value addition across the fruit, fibre, pseudo stem, leaves & inflorescence.
Cissa has also established a Banana Resource Centre as a pilot endeavour at Kalliyoor panchayat in rural Thiruvananthapuram. It will seek to give scientific training to the farmers.
