Tamarind monograph.pdf - Crops for the Future

intervention will not only reduce export of raw forest products to other
States but also provide an opportunity to develop a network of processing
units at a local level for manufacturing finished products. This will increase
State revenue and per capita income of the co-operatives. The capital earned
by the co-operatives may be ploughed back into the area to build up social
capital infrastructures. Marotia and Gauraha (1992) believe that in the long
run minor forest products may emerge as an organised sector and remove
forest dwellers and other rural poor from the exploitative market.
In the Kolli Hills region of Tamil Nadu, India, the MS Swaminathan
Research Foundation in Chennai, an NGO, organised training programmes
for tribal people and trained self help groups in post harvest practices to tap
the indigenous resources such as tamarind (as well as amla and pineapple) to
get monetary benefits.
In all producing countries there is a domestic market for tamarind. To
strengthen local markets it will be necessary to establish the size of the
market, target consumers and the type of products in demand. Therefore,
efforts to find potential markets for tamarind products will be useful to
exploit its potential.
There is evidence that marketing implications are just beginning to be
looked at. For instance, Reddy et al. (2001) analysed the price behaviour of
tamarind in the Ananitspur and Chittour districts of Rogalseema region of
Andhra Pradhesh in India for the period 1990-1999. Several variations in
prices and secular trends provide pointers for growers supplying the markets.
10.5.2 International marketing
International trade in tamarind has been in existence for a long time, though
it is limited to the major producing countries. Only a small proportion of
total production is exported and this is mostly in the dried form. Tamarind is
also exported as pulp, fresh fruit, paste and industrial products including
tamarind seed kernel powder. Demand for these products varies according to
the quantity available and the country. Tamarind is very much an ethnic
food, hence importing countries tend to have large populations of Asians,
Africans and West Indians. In most countries, tamarind exported in fairly
small quantities is categorised with ‘miscellaneous products’ in customs
reports. This makes it difficult to obtain representative and detailed
information on the international trade of tamarind. The information in this
chapter however, indicates an increase in the import/export of tamarind over
the past decade and a rising demand for the products.
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