Black cardamom – a way out of poverty?
How changes in Nepal’s agricultural sector are impacting women and inequality
Agricultural exports featuring more value added will generate jobs, higher incomes, greater tax revenues, and foreign-exchange earnings. That’s the theory anyway. Governments and development practitioners act on it in hopes of fighting poverty in the global South.
Another hope is that such agricultural products will open up new opportunities for rural women in particular – both socially and economically.
But is it true? An international research team led by CDE, University of Bern, has put this idea to the test by analysing Nepal’s cardamom value chain.
“Thanks to cardamom production, we now know the taste of sugar”
“We used to grow vegetables. But what could we earn from it? A penny! You can’t even buy salt with that. Thanks to cardamom production, we now know the taste of sugar.”
The comments of a 42-year-old Dalit woman – from the so-called “untouchable” caste – suggest that Nepal’s government is on the right track with its national export strategy: lifting the country out of poorest-nation status by cultivating high-value agricultural products like cardamom.
Cardamom harvest in Ilam, Nepal
As in most other developing countries, the majority of Nepal’s population – over two thirds – supports itself with agriculture. Traditionally, they cultivate staple crops like rice, corn, and cereals. While these still account for over half of Nepal’s export earnings, they display low productivity and value added.
Traditional rice plantation agriculture
The rise of black cardamom
The story is much different with black cardamom, also referred to as Nepal cardamom, whose cultivation has been promoted by the government for several years. Over the past decade, the spice has experienced a boom, easily outperforming other high-value export crops like tea, chili, and ginger. In 2016, for example, shortly after prices peaked, black cardamom brought in USD 45 million for the roughly 67,000 Nepalese households growing it, compared to just USD 18 for tea.
This was due not only to increased production, but also to significantly higher export prices – though the latter are subject to strong fluctuations.
A farmer in Ilam planting new cardamom.
A flavour with global reach?
With a market share of roughly 65 per cent, Nepal is the biggest producer of black cardamom worldwide. The spice is also grown in Bhutan, north-eastern India, and southern China. The main buyers of Nepal cardamom are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, India, Bangladesh, and Kuwait.
However, India does not allow export via land routes – and export through China is made impossible by the Himalayas. As a result, 99 per cent of Nepal’s cardamom exports go first to India, which in turn markets them beyond the subcontinent – profiting from the corresponding sales margin.
Warehouse of a major cardamom trader in Birtamode, south of Ilam
Hotspot of black cardamom
But how is the cardamom market impacting producers – especially female producers? To find out, a CDE research team joined forces with the University of Bern’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies and the Nepal Centre for Contemporary Research in Kathmandu, and together set out for Ilam, a hotspot of cardamom production in Nepal.
Main road to Ilam
This district at the easternmost tip of Nepal is one of the country’s most prosperous regions. It is known, among other things, for its tea. Since black cardamom has emerged as one of the most important agricultural exports, a trend has become visible: the transition from subsistence agriculture to commercial agriculture.
Black cardamom – smoky and pungent
The capsule fruit of black cardamom (Amomum subulatum), which belongs to the ginger family, is used in spice blends such as garam masala. Black cardamom differs significantly from the green cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum) known in Europe. Black cardamom is dried over an open fire, giving it a smoky taste and pungent aroma. It produces its best yields between three and ten years after planting.
Black cardamom is smoked over an open fire.
Research results confirm economic progress
The scientists’ research, including standardized surveys of over 500 households and many individual interviews with cardamom producers, all points clearly in one direction: cultivation of cardamom has contributed urgently needed income to the livelihoods of smallholder families. This can be seen in their savings and their investments – such as acquisition of electricity, mobile phones, solar panels, sanitary facilities, and improved cookstoves – as well as in their ability to fund their education or that of their children.
One example statistic: In 2010, only 196 households owned a mobile telephone; by 2015, there were 391 mobile phones in the area; and by 2018, the 542 mobile phones owned in the area meant a rate of more than one per household.
Schoolgirls in Ilam
An opportunity for marginalized groups?
However, economic indicators by no means tell the whole story when it comes to well-being. Especially in Nepal – where belonging to a particular group, caste, or gender often leads to exclusion and discrimination – the question of “Who benefits?” is highly charged.
The Dalits, for example, who comprise roughly 20 per cent of Nepal’s population, are economically and socially very disadvantaged. Possessing little or no land, they heavily depend on agriculture-based wage labour to ensure their livelihoods.
A Dalit woman transports fodder grass.
Cultivation is profitable even on small plots
Cardamom is proving to be a game changer in this respect: In their interviews with cardamom producers, the researchers confirmed that black cardamom offers the poorest groups a chance to improve their economic and social status.
One reason for this is that cardamom production is profitable even on small plots, making it attractive for small or even “micro” farmers. Another reason is that cardamom harvesting involves a lot of manual labour and is comparatively better paid. This makes the Dalits welcome helpers during harvest time. A 25-year-old Dalit woman put it as follows: “We are tailors and don’t have any land. During the cardamom harvest, I now go to work for my neighbours. This way I earn more than in my own skilled profession. If I had land, I’d grow my own cardamom. But at least this way I can cover our household needs.”
Improved social status of women and Dalits
“Thanks to their involvement in the highly valued production of cardamom, the Dalits have improved their social status,” observes project coordinator Eva Ming. This resonates practically 100 per cent with the statements made by Dalit interviewees. One of them stated: “We used to be treated differently. Today, just a few members of the older generation still adhere to the idea of ‘untouchability’. We work with the cardamom farmers, earning food and a daily wage. We’re no longer subjected to direct hatred.”
A member of a women’s cooperative
Notably, the research results also show that commercial cardamom production has strengthened the social status of women in general, regardless of their caste or ethnicity. Its cultivation has enabled women to earn their own income. Together with the emergence of women’s cooperatives, which support and educate female cardamom producers, this has significantly contributed to another breakthrough: women now also voice their own opinions at home regarding use of income, savings, and children’s education.
The researchers caution, however, that this has not changed the fundamental patriarchal structures which continue to bar women access to property and resources.
On the right track?
Nevertheless, in this particular concrete setting, the idea of promoting development by means of high-value agricultural products appears to be working. At least for the moment.
Sinking prices on international markets and dependence on a single crop can quickly destroy dreams of a better future.
And the knowledge that plant diseases or pests can suddenly ravage large agricultural areas remains ingrained in the minds of numerous farmers in Ilam: at the turn of the millennium, diverse diseases plagued the cash crop ginger so severely that many farmers gave it up – and switched to cardamom.
Fungal infestation in a cardamom field
A life free of dukha
Apart from these external vicissitudes, there is something else that nags at the producers: their idea of a life free of dukha, or free of hardship and toil. As much as they believe that the shift to commercial agriculture has reduced their own dukha, they wish for their children to have a life outside of agriculture. They imagine such a life as relatively free of hardship in comparison with cardamom production.
“I don’t want my children to remain in the village and experience dukha. I want them to live and study in the city. There they can open a store and have that as their job, without stress,” is how one older villager put it.
The project Feminization, agricultural transition and rural employment ( FATE ) examined how rural households in the global South adapt to the commercialization and export orientation of agriculture. In four different countries – Bolivia, Laos, Nepal, and Rwanda – researchers explored the conditions under which the transition from self-sufficiency to wage dependency improves the opportunities and well-being of rural people – or, instead, increases pressures on them as they become less self-sufficient.
The project was part of the Swiss r4d programme , co-funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Concluded at the end of January 2022, FATE was based at the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies (ICFG) at the University of Bern. The case studies in Nepal were coordinated by the Nepal Centre for Contemporary Research in Kathmandu.
