Narrator: Raw cardamom is one of the most expensive spices in the world. Just one pound of it can be sold for $ 90.
But getting that little green cardamom requires a lot of work. Harvesters need to collect 6 pounds 6 kg of these tiny green pods by hand to produce just one pound of spice.
So, why is it so hard to grow green cardamom? And is that what makes it so expensive? Known as the "queen of spices," cardamom comes from small egg-shaped fruit called pods, which contain several black seeds inside.
Those characters are the ones that give cardamom green-orange, sweet taste, and aroma. The green cardamom plant grows in selected areas around the world but thrives in the Idukki region of India.
When Raja's family has grown spices for 30 years. After planting cardamom, growers have to wait three years for the plants to ripen.
When that waiting period ends, workers will have a large part of the year, from July to February next, to harvest. Although that is a long harvest, not all pods can be harvested at once.
And knowing the exact time of the harvest is the work of skilled workers.
Farmers harvest a maximum of 10 pods, on average, per plant.
That number of legumes produces only 1.5 teaspoons of low cardamom. But the harvest is just beginning.
Only after the dried pods will look like raw cardamom sold in stores. You can buy cardamom pods, just black seeds, or ground cardamom, which are powdered seeds. All the pods go to a different place to dry for about 18 hours during the day or more after harvest.
Any delay will create pods rot and loss of taste. Dry and retain the green color of the spice - a factor that directly affects how valuable the pod will be and what it will be used for.
Interviewer: From here, the pods are cleaned and filtered. Workers use their hands to push and separate small, low-level pods into holes.
Then each pod is sorted according to its size, weight, and color. The most important pods are large, green, and full of seeds.
Of all the cardamom Raja crops, most will not be the most important. Only six will be able to get a good quality, marketable cardamom.
Interviewer: Some green cardamom pods exported from other manufacturers can be very expensive, re-packaged for four times the price of $ 90 per kilogram.
The lowest range of the company costs 900 rupees Indian,
or about $ 12, per kilogram and can be sold as cheap cardamom.
Pods with any signs of fluctuations or decay are not marketable and will therefore be rejected. Interviewer: But the whole process can be disrupted by climate change.
If it rains a lot, the pods will rot. If they are not enough, they will burn in the sun. Recently, severe weather in the world and unpredictable weather in the Indian state of Idukki have especially affected green cardamom.
The region accounts for at least one-sixth of global production and about three-quarters of India's green cardamom production.
But its availability has been affected in recent years, as bad weather and rain damage farmers' crops.
This increased the price of cardamom in 2019 but did not benefit smallholder farmers. To make a big profit, farmers need a lot of inventory.
And when cardamom is sold in small quantities by smallholder farmers, most of the payment is used to cover production costs only.
Raja spends an estimated $ 15,000 on Indians, or about $ 200, per hectare on fertilizer.
That is between 10% and 15% of the total profit he will make per hectare. And those benefits usually do not include the total amount Raja has to spend on production.
Narrator: All of this is considered a global market for cardamom expected to grow by about $ 169 million between 2021 and 2025.
This is good for the industry but may pose a challenge for farmers who cannot meet the demand as the weather continues to jeopardize the availability of this desirable spice.
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