Coconut farms in Kerala, haunted by last year’s 6.6% negative growth in area, are in for a bonanza. The state government has offered to procure 40 million nuts this year.
It is the raw whole coconut that’s to be procured, instead of the conventional copra procurement programme.
“State agency Kerafed will procure nuts at the rate of Rs 4.40 per nut,” Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan said, here, after a meeting of the Cabinet. Of this 80 paise is to be subsidy component. Kerala government has earmarked Rs 2.6 crore for subsiding coconut procurement this year.
Although the state is still India’s topper in coconut production, its control on the nut market has been slipping, thanks to productivity increase in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. According to Coconut Board, West Bengal tops in coconut productivity growth.
A reworked procurement policy hinged on whole coconut has been a long-pending request of the coconut farmer, The Centre had been dithering the proposal saying that fresh nuts were not easy to evaluate as ball copra or mill copra.