Rajesh Ravi Vanilla farmers are abandoning their cultivation with the downslide in the commodity looking irreversible, traders said. Price of the finished product vanillin has slumped to a new low with huge inventories lying unsold with trade associations and farmers forums. Vanilla farming is likely to come down by another 30% for the current year with farmers neglecting and abandoning their plants with prices of other commodities and land shooting up, MC Saju of the All Kerala Vanilla Growers Association told FE. Production in the last harvest season slumped to 600 tonne, a decrease of 40% on year-to-year basis. The area under vanilla farming has already come down from 4,000 hectares to less than 1,000 hectares, he said. Saju expects vanilla farming to completely vanish from the state with rubber and other commodities bouncing back. "Vanilla prices have been on the downslide for some years and a recovery looks very remote. Farmers have lost faith in vanilla with the substitute artificial vanillin retailing at lower levels," he said. Vanilla growers fell into financial difficulties following crash in the price of the commodity during the past 2-3 years. Prices slumped to less than Rs 600 per kg of processed beans from a high of over Rs 20,000 per kg in 2003-04 (April-March). Vanilla prices soared in 2003-04 mainly due to a hurricane damaging crop in Madagascar, world's leading producer of the commodity. The much-hyped value addition efforts by the farmers' oragnisation, Vanilco, also have not made any significant impact on the demand for vanilla products.