Rise After The Fall​​​​​​​

Sikkim, once the world's largest producer of large cardamom, is trying to regain its lost glory. Can it achieve the feat in the face of a changing climate?

- Nidhi Jamwal​​​​​​​

AT 92, Til Bahadur Chhetri is a living witness of the rise and fall of large cardamom in Sikkim. Prized for its complex aroma, the exotic spice Amomum subulatum is grown across the eastern Himalayan region, including Sikkim and the Darjeeling hills in India. “Till the late 1990s, I used to get 40 sacks (about 2,000 kg) of dry large cardamom a year from my 7.2-hectare (ha) land. After that production started to decline,” says Bahadur, a resident of Hee Patal village in West Sikkim district. “Though it has improved in recent years, all I get now is a measly 300 kg,” he laments. In neighbouring Hee Martam village, Ganesh Chhetri, a young farmer, recounts a similar tale. “Just 10 years ago, my 2 ha land used to yield 300 kg of cardamom. It is now down to 100 kg,” says Ganesh, adding that the decline has forced farmers to shift to less lucrative crops like corn, vegetables and fodder.

The trend is evident across the Northeastern state, which till 2003- 2004 was regarded as the world’s largest producer of large cardamom. Though it continues to be the largest producer of large cardamom in India, the title of the world’s leading producer now rests with neighbouring Himalayan country, Nepal, which caters to about 68 per cent of the global market share of the spice.

A 2014 working paper by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), an intergovernmental learning and knowledge sharing centre based in Nepal, shows that the area under large cardamom in Sikkim increased from 19,912 ha to 22,714 ha between 1999 and 2004. That year, the state saw a record production of 5,152 tonnes of cardamom, up from 3,710 tonnes five years ago (see ‘Falling out of favour’).