LABOUR SHORTAGE HITS SRI LANKA CINNAMON INDUSTRY
Along Sri Lanka’s west coast, towns like Negombo have abundant green cinnamon farms that keep peelers of the bushes’ fragrant inner bark busy. Pesthathanthri Sumathipala, a seasoned peeler, is up at dawn to lead a small crew of peelers through a 20-hectare farm. Skilled eyes are needed to choose which branches to slice for the day’s harvest.
Later, he sits in a half-lit, crumbling building filled with the aroma of the spice. The sharp fragrance spreads as the 57-yearold scrapes the outer bark, massages the golden brown inner bark and then, with a sharp knife, gently teases out long strips of cinnamon to dry.
“There is a lot of cinnamon to harvest, not just here but in other towns,” said Sumathipala, who has been at his craft for more than 40 years, having learned it from his father.
Cinnamon trails across Sri Lanka, the world’s leading exporter of pure cinnamon, attest to this ample supply. But this abundance exposes a troubling picture for the South Asian island: an inability to harvest it all. Currently, the country has an estimated 30,000 peelers to harvest 33,000 hectares of the spice — but 50,000 would be needed to reap the entire crop during its two monsoon seasons, the ideal damp conditions for peeling.
“Due to the shortage of peelers, only 35% of the crop is harvested twice a year, while 65% of the crop is harvested once a year,” said Sarada M De Silva, chairman of the Cinnamon Training Academy, in the southern coastal town of Kosgoda. “There is a great dearth of peelers, so we cannot meet the global demand.”
Research by the Institute of Policy Studies, a Colombo-based think tank, has identified two problems that keep new crops of peelers at bay: a social stigma that continues to stain the labour force in status-conscious Sri Lankan society, and the growing diversity of the labour market, which is tempting away young workers from the traditional cinnamon-peeling families that hail from the country’s southern coastal belt.
“Peelers need social recognition if they are to stay on, because the whole industry depends on them,” said Dilani Hirimuthugodage, co-author of an IPS study on the cinnamon trade.
Sumathipala’s rough, cinnamon coated fingers explain why the peelers are indispensable. Years of practice lie behind his ability to produce the cinnamon quill, cigar-shaped and stuffed with smaller strands of the spice. The quill marks out “Ceylon cinnamon”, as the island’s produce is branded in world markets, in a reference to its earlier name.
Industry insiders say the peelers are an essential element in Ceylon cinnamon’s pre-eminence over a cheaper global rival called “cassia cinnamon” which is grown in India, Southeast Asia and China.
“Our peelers give us an edge over other countries in the cinnamon trade,” Azid bin Rafy Ismail, a cinnamon grower in Negombo, said during a walk through his Nalin Anura De Silva holds up a bundle of cinnamon quills for export to Mexico.
farm. “You can plant and grow cinnamon anywhere that has our climate, but that matters little, since they do not have our peelers, who have learned their art through generations, to produce the quills.”
Sri Lanka’s peeler shortfall coincides with a propitious time for the local cinnamon trade. The global price for the commodity has steadily increased since 2004, rising from US$4 to $12 a kilogramme. Sri Lanka exported 13,000 tonnes of cinnamon valued at $159 million in 2016, according to the National Chamber of Exporters. Cinnamon export earnings amounted to $132.3 million in 2014.
The favourable global price for cinnamon, which accounts for more than half
the island’s spice export earnings, is driven by demand from Mexico, Peru, Colombia and the United States, the top importers of Ceylon cinnamon.
The Mexican market demands five-inch quills, said Nalin Anura De Silva, director of GD De Silva Sons, a cinnamon exporter in the southern coastal town of Ahungalla. “We trade mainly with South America. They like our pure cinnamon,” he said.
Not surprisingly, the whiff of profit that cinnamon offers has resulted in the spread of cinnamon farms. It has also encouraged farmers who formerly grew other crops to try their hands at growing the fragrant spice. Consequently, state employed agriculture extension officers in Negombo have their work cut out — providing cinnamon seedlings and advice to the new growers.
“Word has spread about good cinnamon prices, and more people in Negombo want to grow it,” said Madhushika Hansanee, an agriculture officer. “We gave away free cinnamon seedlings until 2015, but last year we introduced a 50% subsidy for the seedlings.”
Sri Lanka, which exports 85% of its cinnamon harvest, has witnessed a steady rise in its annual output, from 15,900 tonnes in 2006 to 17,707 tonnes in 2015. Nearly 80% of the producers are small farmers strung along the western and southern coastal belts, which have long produced the spice that played a role in attracting Portuguese colonists in 1505. They were followed by Dutch and British colonial administrations.
The cinnamon farms spread across the southern coastal belt are a mark of the growers’ resilience, too. Many of the farms were flattened by the 2004 tsunami, which killed 31,000 people and damaged large swathes of coastal agriculture. The sector is now expected to grow by 5% annually, according to local growers, who had to wait four years after replanting to enjoy profitable harvests. Yet the peelers required to hit higher production targets remain lacking.
Sarada De Silva, chairman of the Cinnamon Training Academy, is crafting one remedy. Since January, the academy has begun training new peelers, hoping to overcome the social stigma that has been the bane of the sector. “There is an interest in the academy because our training is seen positively,” he said.