Kerala turns 70 having lost 77% of its paddy land. Governments of both fronts keep setting farm targets, missing them and blaming someone else.
Kerala turns 70 today, and the meal that defines the state – the sadya – now crosses state borders to reach the table. Its banana leaf, rice and the onions its sambar come largely from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The state, which formed on 1 November 1956, now grows about one-seventh of the rice its people eat.
In 1955-56, the first year after formation, Kerala farmed 7.6 lakh hectares of paddy, state Directorate of Economics and Statistics figures show. The area rose to about 8.8 lakh hectares in the 1970s. The state’s Economic Review put it at 1.78 lakh hectares in 2023-24, a fall of 77% since the state’s first year.
Rice output followed the land. Kerala harvested 5.3 lakh tonnes in 2023-24, down 10.5% in a single year. Demand runs at 38 to 40 lakh tonnes a year, so the state’s own fields meet roughly 13 to 14% of it. Down To Earth put Kerala’s food-grain deficit at about half in the 1960s and 85% by 2007-08.
Other states fill the gap. Jaya and Jyothi make up 70% of the rice Keralites eat. Jaya comes from Andhra Pradesh, while Jyothi comes from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. That year Kerala agreed to buy 3,840 tonnes of Jaya a month from Andhra Pradesh’s civil supplies corporation, delivered by train. It also sought Jaya Bondalu paddy from East and West Godavari. Weather that affects the Andhra coast also impacts Kerala kitchens, and India’s weather office expects a cyclonic storm to reach that coast this week.
Tamil Nadu and Karnataka supply the leaf and the vegetables
The leaf itself comes from outside the state. Banana leaves for this year’s Onam came mainly from Mettupalayam, Coimbatore and Cumbum in Tamil Nadu. Dealers turned to Mysuru and Bengaluru when rain damaged Tamil Nadu plantations. Kerala added only small loads from Perumbavoor, Piravom and Thiruvaniyoor.
Kerala grew 17.2 lakh tonnes of vegetables in 2023-24, Agriculture Department figures show. Demand that year stood at 20 to 21 lakh tonnes, according to figures. Onions, tomatoes and potatoes arrive from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. In 2015, Kerala wrote to Tamil Nadu after vegetables bought there showed pesticide residues three to five times the permitted limit.
The crops that built Kerala’s trade have moved too. Kerala still has India’s largest area under coconut. Coconut Development Board figures put Karnataka ahead on output in 2022-23, and Union government figures name Tamil Nadu the top producer in 2024-25. Karnataka grew 78,585 tonnes of black pepper in 2020-21 against Kerala’s 34,524, the Directorate of Arecanut and Spices Development reports. In 2023-24, Deccan Herald reported, the gap was about 89,000 tonnes to 27,505.
Milk for the payasam crosses borders as well. Kerala’s dairy cooperative Milma bought up to 2 lakh litres a day from Karnataka’s Nandini to cover a deficit. When Karnataka and Tamil Nadu cut supplies in 2023, Milma bought from Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.
The tiller’s children left for the Gulf
The shift began with land reform. The Kerala Land Reforms Act of 1963, enforced through amendments around 1970, gave cultivating tenants ownership of the land they tilled. The Act still bans agricultural leasing. Researchers at the Centre for Public Policy Research link that ban to fragmented holdings, fallow fields and high costs.
The next generation has already left the fields. Kerala has 2.2 million emigrants, the Kerala Migration Survey 2023 found, and the state received Rs 2.16 lakh crore (about $22.8bn) in remittances. Land speculation followed the Gulf boom, and houses rose on former paddy fields. Between 2018-19 and 2024-25 the state cleared the conversion of 10,950 hectares of paddy land and collected Rs 1,606 crore (about $170m) in fees. Kerala passed the Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act in 2008 to slow that loss.
Enforcement of that law has been uneven. The Fourth Plate’s Farms or Malls investigation traced how an Agricultural Officer’s report held up Lulu Group’s planned mall on contested land in Thrissur, event as the Group announced in 2023 that it would procure paddy from Telangana for export to the Middle East.
In August 2026 a Kerala High Court division bench set aside orders removing 1.6 hectares there from the paddy land data bank and required the officer’s report first. In a separate case, the court ordered the state to move Rs 1,510 crore (about $160m) in conversion fees into the fund the law created to restore paddy land, as The Fourth Plate has reported.
New hands now work the fields that remain. Bengali workers have led the Mundakan harvest at Kolakkattuchali in Malappuram for six years, earning Rs 1,100 a day plus lunch. In Wayanad, Bengali men replant paddy, a task women traditionally did, and Bengali tunes have replaced the Kambalanatti songs. A 2021 study put Kerala’s inter-state migrant workforce at close to 31 lakh. Kerala sent its workers to the Gulf, and it now serves as a Gulf for workers from eastern India. Some of the fields are still robust. Kudumbashree women’s groups farmed vegetables on 8,913 acres for Onam 2025, cutting the state’s reliance on Tamil Nadu for that season.
Kerala’s farm promises keep missing their dates
Kerala governments have announced a farm revival almost every year since 2016, and most deadlines have slipped. Former Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan made vegetable self-sufficiency a flagship goal in 2016. In February 2020, then Agriculture Minister V S Sunil Kumar promised it within 470 days. Fresh five-year targets followed in 2021 and December 2024, and the goal now sits at 2033. In 2023-24 the state still grew about 5 lakh tonnes less than what it consumed.
Paddy has fared no better. The Rs 3,000 crore Subhiksha Keralam programme began in 2020, when Kerala farmed 2.05 lakh hectares of paddy. By 2023-24 the area had fallen to 1.78 lakh hectares.
Outside money has stalled too. The World Bank approved a $200m loan for the Kerala Climate Resilient Agri-Value Chain Modernisation (KERA) project in October 2024. The first Rs 139.66 crore, received in March 2025, missed the bank’s seven-day deadline to reach the project account. Finance Minister K N Balagopal blamed technical issues, and the government later ordered an inquiry into how journalists learnt of the delay.
Private pledges show a similar gap. Lulu Group announced a Rs 400 crore food park at Kalamassery in February 2022, due to open by late 2023. In February 2025 it pledged a 20-acre food processing unit at Kalamassery within a Rs 5,000 crore Kerala commitment. The Fourth Plate found no public record that the first park has opened.
Of the 499 letters of intent signed at the Invest Kerala Global Summit, 100 had started work by November 2025. Those projects are worth Rs 35,111 crore of the Rs 1.8 lakh crore pledged.
And at the end of the spectrum, the farmers still wait for their money. The state owed paddy farmers Rs 433 crore in August 2023. In August 2026 the new UDF government sanctioned Rs 150 crore for receipts issued up to 31 July. Agriculture Minister T Siddique promised to clear the dues before Onam.
On 25 August, Kerala Kaumudi reported that Rs 264.26 crore of the season’s paddy payments remained unpaid, with 18,978 of 32,035 farmers still waiting. The government said it had sent Rs 96 crore directly to 13,057 farmers, but most had yet to receive it. The report traced the delay to the bank consortium system, which must repay earlier loans before releasing new payments to farmers.
Each government has blamed someone else. In August 2023, Agriculture Minister P Prasad said the Union government owed Supplyco Rs 637 crore, and Industries Minister P Rajeeve blamed delayed central funds. In August 2025, Civil Supplies Minister G R Anil said the Centre had withheld Rs 1,259 crore of Kerala’s paddy payments since 2017-18.
The UDF government has kept the pattern. In October 2026, Civil Supplies Minister Anoop Jacob blamed the Centre’s milling ratio for a Rs 63.37 crore liability owed to mill owners. The same month, Agriculture Minister T Siddique blamed State Bank of India age rules for blocking dues to farmers over 70, and asked Supplyco to pay them directly.
The UDF manifesto has also promised Rs 35 a kilogram for paddy, and that pledge will test whether Kerala’s last paddy farmers stay in the fields.
As Kerala turns 70, it relies on Andhra rice and Tamil Nadu leaves for its most ordinary meal. Keeping its last 1.78 lakh hectares of paddy under the plough is the first test of the state’s next 70 years.
