With coconut prices going through the roof, farmers have been advised to sell their produce immediately. The current farm gate price is hovering around R10-12 per nut compared to R4-5 per nut recorded in the same period a year ago.
Since coconut prices are unlikely to increase further, it will be a lucrative deal for the farmers to sell their produce immediately on harvest without going for storage, report released by Domestic and Export Market Intelligence Cell attached to Tamil Nadu Agriculture University (TNAU) said.
The TNAU has advised the farmers after conducting a market survey in Pollachi Regulated Market, a major coconut trading market in Tamil Nadu, analysing price behaviour for the past 10 years. The raw coconut and copra price have increased in recent times following coconut oil prices rising steadily in the global market.
Coconut oil prices increased around 60% during the past five months to touch R100 per kg. The price increase in the domestic market was also due to the raising coconut exports when local production declined. According to trade sources, the copra arrival in the market marginally declined to 6.5 tonne in 2010-11 from 6.6 lakh tonne in 2009-10. The estimated amount of oil crushed from copra stood at 4.2 lakh tonne in 2010-11 against 4.35 lakh tonne a year ago.
Coconut production in the country touched 10.14 million tonne in 2009-10 when the area under cultivation was around 1.90 million hectare. Kerala with a production of 3.88 million tonne ranked first followed by Tamil Nadu with 3.42 million tonne and Karnataka with 1.13 million tonne, accounting for 83% of the country total production.