Land Leasing in Kerala: Evidences from a Field Survey

Abstract

This article, based on a primary survey in two villages of Wayanad district in Kerala, argues that the high incidence of landlessness, as well as the predominance of marginal and small landholdings, has maintained a high incidence of tenancy in Kerala. The tenancy market is dominated by farmers with smaller landholdings. The land is leased mainly for the cultivation of cash crops under cash rents. The land for leasing is supplied by those landed households who have withdrawn from agriculture due to better earnings from non-farm sector, difficulties in procuring labour for agricultural tasks and dwindling irrigation resources. The landless and marginal-small farming households predominantly form the pool of lessees who lease land for two important reasons. First, the growing opportunities in the non-farm sector have been uneven in nature in the sense that they have absorbed only a section of rural labour, leaving many others to remain in cultivation and augment their family income through the leasing of land. Second, lease cultivation, in spite of high fluctuations in the prices and production of crops, is generally profitable for lessees in normal years and when the prices are on an upswing. Given the role of land leasing in providing economic support to rural poor households, the state government should revisit the legal ban of land leasing on Kerala.