At a time when farmers across the state are increasingly abandoning paddy cultivation, a group of traditional paddy farmers and agriculture experts have teamed up to form the state’s first producer company to promote paddy cultivation in Wayanad The company, Wayanad Agriculture & Spices Producer company Private Limited (WASP), has already reclaimed 20 acres of fallow land at Panamaram and converted it into lush green fields. The company plans to expand the cultivation to 200 acres next season. The 11 promoters of the company are people with decades of experience in rice cultivation, including Cheruvayal Raman, a tribal farmer who had successfully preserved around 30 rare indigenous rice varieties over the decades. Managing director of the company, K Narayanan, an agriculture scientist who had done his PhD in organic agriculture from Yamagata University in Japan, said that the prime objective of the company was to demonstrate that paddy cultivation could still be done on a commercial scale in the state by embracing maximum mechanisation and opting for organic farming. “We are taking up the venture as a serious business activity and plans to integrate paddy cultivation in afarm-to-fork model by marketing the organic rice produced by the farmers,” Narayanan said. P Vikraman, the technical consultant of the company and former principal agriculture officer in Wayanad, said that the company would have a paid up capital to Rs 25 lakh.“We are paying upto Rs 5,000 per acre to land owners for license to cultivate in the fallow lands for 11 months,” he said. “With an expected yield of 3 tonnes per hectre, we are expecting a return of Rs 60,000 per acre. The sale of straw would also fetch another Rs 60,000 per acre under current prices,” he said. The company has entered into agreement with a mill to process the rice, which will be marketed under own brand. It is cultivating four traditional rice varieties in six acres for seed multiplication for setting up a seed bank. The company has plans to set up an agro clinic and lease out modern farm equipment to fellow farmers. According to estimates of farmer organizations, the district had witnessed 32 farmer suicides in 2012, pointing to a severe agrarian crisis in the hill district which has been battered by steep fall in the prices of many farm produce and impact of climate change.