The State Government is expected to come up with a policy on tapping Neera and how to market it in an effort to double the income of farmers, said S.J. Chiru, Principal Secretary, Agricultural Marketing and Agri Business.
Speaking at the inaugural of two-day Coconut Festival 2018, organised here by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)- Coimbatore, he said that in tune with Niti Aayog and Central Government’s reforms, Tamil Nadu has joined the National Agriculture Market. The State Government is in the process of formalising a separate processing policy. The Tamil Nadu Government managed 278 regulated markets but what they got was mostly ‘copra’, he added.
Coir Board Chairman C.P. Radhakrishnan said the industry and farmers will benefit if the board related to coconut functioned as a combined unit.
The Coir Board had been working on developing coir plywoods. It would soon replace other plywoods, as enough research had gone into it in the past two years. The Board recently managed to bag the ‘E1’ certification for export to the European Union and was in the process of getting the ‘E0’ certification for export to the United States market.
Mr. Radhakrishnan said though value addition per coconut was low in India compared to the Philippines, Thailand and a few other South East Asian countries, the former had managed to double its export. Since his taking over, annual coir exports had gone up from ₹1,600 crore to ₹3,000 crore.
He also appealed to the coconut farmers and entrepreneurs to make use of the various schemes offered by the Coir Board to set up coconut-based value added products.
Tamil Nadu Agricultural University Vice Chancellor K. Ramasamy said though production of various agriculture crops had doubled in the State, the objective of doubling farmers’ income still remained unfulfilled.
The Indian Institute of Food Processing Technology Director C. Anandharamakrishnan said the institution had taken up coconut as its crop for the year to develop various technologies for tapping and processing coconut. Last year it had taken up small onion and was able to make an impact, especially at a time when farmers faced fall in value.
India was among the top three coconut producers in the world but the value it was able to extract per coconut was only around ₹30. Indonesia, the Philippines and a few other countries were able to extract up to ₹180 a nut because of going in for value added products, said P. Ravichandran, Chairman, CII, Tamil Nadu State Council.
This showed that there was huge potential in taking up developing added products and generating employment as well, he added.
If the full potential of coconut was exploited, it would be a business around ₹35,000 crore, said S. Senthilnathan, Convenor, Agri Business and Food Processing Panel, CII, Coimbatore Zone.
S. Narayanan, Chairman, Coimbatore Zone welcomed the gathering.
