MEenachil and Kanhirappally taluk in Kerala’s Kottayam district are considered the ‘rubber capital’ of India. It was from here that rubber cultivation spread across Kerala and subsequently to different parts of India. Kerala went on to produce 90 percent of the country’s natural rubber.
Surprisingly, in recent years, rubber is being replaced by jackfruit here. Rony Mathew, chairman of the Agriculture Products Processing and Marketing Cooperative (APPMC) in Pala, Kottayam district, says that in the past three years about 100 acres of jackfruit plantation have replaced rubber trees.
In 1954, Mathew Thomas. . .
