Govt urged to fix ‘MSP’ for coconuts

TIRUCHY: Coconut farmers have announced a protest on August 10 demanding the state government to fix a fair price for their produce.

PR Pandian, president, coordination committee of All Farmers Association, while appealing to the state government to save the livelihood of farmers, told reporters Pattukkottai in Thanjavur district on Monday that there was no proper fixation of pricing for coconut. The farmers have been staging a series of protests across the state pressing this demand.

“A coconut that was sold at Rs 50 earlier has no takers today even though it is sold at Rs 6 at present. This is what forces farmers to launch the protest,” he said and added that their protest on August 10 would be to push the government to fix a fair price.

Meanwhile, Pandian said that the Tamil Nadu agriculture marketing department has mooted a plan to market value added products of coconut and a fund of Rs 5.25 crore has allocated to a private firm to erect the machinery at the Integrated Coconut Trade Centre in Pattukkottai. He urged the agriculture engineering department to inspect the quality of machinery installed at the centre.

He said that the local farmers have alleged that the machinery were not efficient enough to make value-added products by handling 25,000 coconuts at a time, as per the original plan. “Farmers claim that the machines installed had capacity to handle just 1,500 coconuts at a time and so it is time that experts from the state and central governments inspected the machines,” he said.