A community that breathes agriculture

Halakki women selling vegetables. 

Known for its beaches and temples, Gokarna is a popular destination during summer. However, very few are acquainted with its other facets, like the indigenous Halakki Vokkaliga community and their expertise in agriculture. Fragmented fields of just two-four cents do not seem to make any difference, as they grow a variety of crops which are rare to find anywhere else.

Sweet potatoes (bili genasu), parrot green chillies (Gokarna mensu), slender purple, white and green-streaked brinjals (Gokarna badane), burgundy-coloured broad-leaved amaranthus (kempu harive), ash gourds and pumpkins twice the size of our heads are commonly grown here. Other local specials include pear-shaped bottle gourds (haalu gumbala), dark green and yellow rugby-shaped cucumbers (sambar soute), Malabar spinach (basale) made into wreaths and braided sweet onions. These are a few of those special vegetables, peculiar to coastal Uttara Kannada. Loved by locals, these veggies are also the favourites of visitors who travel by. And they are grown all thanks to the Halakki community.

While paddy is the crop of the monsoons and the staple, these other crops, grown from late winter to midsummer, are an additional means of income for a typical Halakki family. Most of the farmers are small landholders and the way they handle their fields is remarkable. Every inch of land is brought under cultivation, and even the fences are covered with climbing vines of gourds.

The credit for preserving such a rich biodiversity goes to the local community as they conserve and manage these resources. They are the custodians of agrobiodiversity, inadvertently contributing to food security.

While men in the community perform pre-harvest practices like land preparation and irrigation, women carry out post-harvest operations. This includes processing and storage. Women also generally maintain kitchen gardens, attend to the nutrition needs of the family, save seeds for next cropping season and contribute to the conservation of diversity.

One step ahead, the Halakki women also manage marketing the farm produce, contributing to the livelihood. Halakki women vendors, across various ages, selling a variety of vegetables on the footpaths in crowded places, bargaining with customers in their native language is a common sight in Gokarna and the neighbouring Ankola and Kumta towns.

Women in action

According to the statistics from the Horticulture Department, Gokarna alone recorded a production of 3,700 tonnes of various vegetables before the pandemic. In recent years, natural calamities like heavy, off-season rainfall are causing decline in production.

Agricultural land being turned into residential areas and resorts has proven the biggest threat to the agrobiodiversity, marks Suresh Gouda, a Halakki farmer from Rudrapad village. The drastic shift towards the cultivation of cash crops like areca and youth being attracted towards opportunities in the tourism sector have also resulted in a decline in interest in vegetable cultivation, he says.

People here hope to save these crops by getting the geographical indication (GI) tag. Kumta sweet onion, Kagga paddy (which grows in saline water) and Gokarna chilly have great potential for GI protection and conservation.