Unhappy with MSP, coconut growers demand revision

MADURAI: Many coconut growers are not content with the minimum support (MSP) price approved by the Cabinet committee for copra for 2023 season.

T Perumal, national vice president, Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS), Vadipatti, Madurai, said while the MSP for a kilogram of milling copra has been fixed at Rs 108, it’s Rs 117 a kg of ball copra.

Despite incurring high production costs, the coconut growers could hardly make a profit from copra. The average cost of production for one kilo of copra is Rs 150. But, the MSP fixed by the government is much less than the production cost, which has been increased by 40 per cent over last year now. Adding to woes, he said expenditure on fertilizer rose by 40 per cent and labor cost has also risen by 30 per cent.

He said without considering these factors causing increase in expenses on copra production, the Cabinet committee on economic affairs has fixed the MSP. Citing these, Perumal said the authorities should take into consideration some primary factors such as skilled labour cost, interest accrued on farmlands and also the family labour, who solely rely on cultivation. Only when these legitimate factors experienced by the growers were considered, the government would contemplate on increasing the MSP reasonably.

If the government failed to support the coconut growers, coconut trees would become extinct in the coming days as farmers would be forced to switch over to other crops, he told DT Next on Sunday.

Further, the BKS vice president also sought the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India limited (NAFED) for direct procurement of de-husked coconut under the price support scheme from the farmers. He opined that the NAFED could procure a tonne of de-husked coconuts from the farmers at a cost of Rs 35,000.

TVSN Veera Arasu, a farmer from Pattiveeranpatti, Dindigul district, said coconut is a perennial crop and its cycle of harvest is at a regular interval of every 40 to 45 days and therefore farming depends on labour.

According to P Murugesan, state executive member, BKS and a farmer from Pudur village of Thoothukudi district, scores of farmers affiliated to BKS joined a demonstration organised in New Delhi on December 19 urging the Union government to fix ‘Minimum Reasonable Price’ for copra. Let the government need not support the farmers, but at least fix a reasonable price for the farm produce, he demanded.