In the words of a field officer in the state agriculture department, the plea for higher MSP was right in principle, but wrong in fields. The centre's new MSP for mill copra is Rs 2900 per quintal. Last year, this was Rs 2700 per quintal.

Experts in the perennial crop markets in central and state government bodies in Kerala hold the view that the increase of Rs 200 in copra MSP was not as unfair to farmers as projected by the Kerala MPs in Lok Sabha. Even as the Coconut Development Board (CDB) in Kochi had recommended Rs 3500 per quintal for mill copra on `a liberal estimate', a senior CDB official pointed out that the empirical data do not show that more than Rs 2900 go into the making of a quintal of mill copra.

According to a Nabard DGM in the State, coconut is cultivated in the state more as part of the mixed croppingpattern characteristic of household farms rather than as a scientific plantation crop. This way coconut farmers rarely incur financial costs in agricultural inputs like manure or pesticide.

A state agriculture department official said the destruction of a substantial portion of coconut trees in the state was testimonial to the negligence with which coconut cultivation was treated. Skyrocketing production costs theory stands only when the production process was religiously followed, he added.

Kerala MPs, in a rare show of unity cutting across partylines, had two weeks ago argued that the increase of Rs 200 in copra MSP was inadequate to cover the increase in production costs. Coconut farmers, numbering about 30 lakh, are skewed over every Lok Sabha constituency in the state.

However, the iota of truth in the argument deserves serious note, according to CDB director Markose. Cost escalation in the harvesting of coconut trees over the last couple of years calls for anxiety. Kerala is facing acute shortageof labour in the coconut tree-climbing sector.

The CDB's attempts to popularise mechanisation in this sector had not been too fruitful because of socio-economic factors. The device to aid coconut tree clibing, priced at Rs 250, was distributed free among 1000 farmers. The state agriculture department had also given subsidy for the purchase of these machines.

Markose said the wages in coconut tree-climbing ruled exorbitantly high despite the mechanisation attempts. The wages hover around Rs 15 per tree in cities, according to CDB's labour market studies. In the context of falling productivity, this tends to eat on the margin in coconut farming, he added.

Coconut oilmarketmen too have not quite been fervent on the copra support price crusade. A spokesman of the EEC-sponsored Kera Karshaka Sahakarana Federation (Kerafed) - an umbrella organisation of 400-odd copra processing societies, which sells its own brand of coconut oil- expressed fears that if the MSP of copra was hiked irrationally giving in tothe pressures of the coconut farmer lobby, the coconut oil prices will also correspondingly go up.

This will tell upon the coconut oil consumption and correspondingly on the sales. Already, coconut oil has only a sway of less than ten percent in the edible oil segment. The argument that the increases in the support price of other oilseeds have outpaced the support price of copra in percentage terms was ludicrous, considering the humble place of coconut oil in the edible oil segment, he said.

It may be noted that even the spokesman of Cochin Oil Merchants Association had only put up a token protest at the Centre's recently announced copra MSP. Farmers and merchants are not happy about the Rs 2900 support price, he had said. The price should have been at least Rs 3,000 per quintal, according to the carefully worded reaction. The plea is only for a very token increase.