Fest price surges make floriculture profitable in Karnataka

Although the high price of flowers has brought tears to customers during the festival season, for floriculturists, especially those who escaped the rain fury, it has brought joy.

To put the price rise in perspective, jasmine, which usually costs Rs 75 for one maaru (five feet of stringed flowers), reached Rs 450 a maaru. Prema Ganesh Poojary, a jasmine grower from Kumbhashi, Udupi district estimates that this price can go up to Rs 1,250 a maaru a the festive season nears.

Such seasonal increase in prices has motivated several farmers to turn to floriculture — flower farming — to bolster their incomes. In fact, in 2017, the total area under flower cultivation increased by 10.3 per cent over the previous year. In 2018, this number increased by 5.8 per cent. Karnataka is a leading producer of flowers with 18,000 hectares under floriculture. It accounts for 14 per cent of the country’s share of flower production.

“During the festival season, prices can rise by 100 per cent. Sometimes prices go up by 200 per cent,” says Chenna Reddy Aswath, principal scientist Indian Institute of Horticulture Research (IIHR). He cites the example of crossandra (Kanakambara) which costs Rs 200 a kg and shoots up to Rs 1,200 when festivals approach.

This is because floriculture is possible even on farms that are smaller that an acre. “Many farms in and around Bengaluru have installed polyhouses to grow chrysanthemums and gerberas and are able to earn about 10 times more than vegetable farmers,” says Aswath. Even farmers with small land holdings are able to cultivate flowering plants enough to sustain themselves.

The returns are enough to keep farmers like G C Somshekhar, from Kuramkote village, Tumakuru district, happy when his open fields are coloured with the blooms of chrysanthemums and button flowers.

With Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000 of input costs, he was able to get returns of Rs 2 to 2.5 lakh a year.

Farmers generally cultivate local flowers in open fields including jasmine, kanakambara, sugandharaja and sevanthige. “The investment is not very high, although the returns are not as high as the flowers are grown in a sheltered atmosphere,” added Ashwath.

However, incessant rains in the past two years have put a damper on annual income. “All our plants just rotted away. Harvesting flowers was not possible,” says Somshekhar.

Floriculturists who have polyhouses fare much better in enduring weather changes. Shamsundar T D, a Doddaballapur farmer who cultivates gerberas on his polyhouse farm of five acres, has had a good experience. “Per acre, I make about Rs 14 lakh a year,” he says.

However, he cautions that the initial investment is very high. “Unless a farmer has the capital to first invest in a polyhouse, they will not be able to sustain it.

Since this is a commercial crop, bank interest rates are at 12 per cent. People will not be able to afford it,” he says. In 2015, the cost of construction of a polyhouse was Rs 500 per square metre.

In the span of five years, this cost has doubled. “The increase in the price of metal and plastic has contributed to the increase in prices,” he says.

The high investments required for floriculture in polyhouses have deterred aspiring farmers from building them. “Maybe my crops could have been saved if I had some sort of shelter,” says Somshekhar.