With summer heat gone Tender coconuts are heading to north

Mangalore: Worst of the summer heat is behind the coastal Karnataka and the south interior Karnataka. The demand for the summer cooler - Tender Coconut has dropped by 50 per cent. Many push carts selling tender coconut pods have switched to either mangoes or some other seasonal fruits.

Thanks to monsoons arriving with a bang, the tender coconuts are now heading towards the North and Delhi, Haryana and Noida are now beelining for these natural thirst quenchers. Tender coconut aggregators from these regions have contracted the growers in Karnataka, particularly from the coast, Malnad and Bayaluseema and loading them in trucks and heading north.

“2023 summer was a good time for the growers in the state as every tender coconut pod was plucked from the trees were consumed, but thanks to the farmers there is big volume of crops still standing in the plantations in Dakshina Kannada, Uttara Kannada,Udupi, Shivamogga, Tiptoor, Tumakuru, Mandya, Hassan and many other districts, “We are lucky there is still demand for our produce in North of the country. Just today I had entered into a contract with a Tender Coconut aggregator from Haryana who sent a fleet of trucks to my plantation in Chennaryapatna taluk and bought up 7 truck load of tender coconuts for Haryana, Delhi and Noida. He is coming back again next week for mopping up plantations in Mandya, Maddur, Ramanagaram, Tumakuru, Tiptoor and Mysuru. The numbers are huge, he is looking for a crore of tender coconuts in the three weeks” said Puttamadappa a grower in Chennarayapatna.

For the local aggregators the bulk rate of one pod of tender coconut is Rs. 16-18 if it is picked up from the plantation. The retail prices hover around Rs. 24-26 per pod for the retailers for the consumer the prices are Rs. 35-40, But the North Indian aggregators say that we pay at least Rs. 3-4 per pod to the growers and retailers in Haryana, Delhi and Noida each pod is sold to the retailer at Rs. 40-45 but when it reaches the consumer it commands a price of Rs. 65-70 depending upon the locality. In Gurugram (Gurgaon) in Haryana each pod commands a price of Rs. 80 and still the demand cannot be met fully they rue.

Thesupply chains that cater to the malls in Northern states stock from each southern growing areas depicted on the stock the highest price is always commanded by the stock from the Coastal region of Karnataka like Dakshin Kannada, Udupi Uttara Kannada and parts of south Goa.

Market functionaries in the South Karnataka and coastal districts indicate that the tender coconut growers and bulk sellers were looking towards Mumbai and Panaji where tender coconuts were commanding 45 per cent more prices than the conventional markets inside Karnataka, while major market was Bengaluru in the state which consumes over half a million pods every day according to the market operators. With the Mall operators also foraging for tender coconut as their main earner during the summer the common consumers and vendors are keeping their fingers crossed about the availability of tender coconuts at the street corner stores.

However, Malls will still have to keep up the quality quotient of the tender coconuts. “They cannot look dirty, or strains of grey, they have to be green,yellow and harvested with a hook and in good shape. We even plan to label them naming their original plantation” says Suresh Nanjappa a local mall procurer.

The major growing areas in the state included the coast, old Mysore and Bayaluseeme, but this year the cultivation region was facing under production as over 20 per cent of palms will begin yielding only in May, they are in 30 per cent of the area under cultivation. “Which meant we will have short supply of tender coconuts this summer. The growing areas like Ramanagaram, Mandya, Tumkur, Tiptur, Hassan and few parts of Chikkaballapura and Mysore were the major suppliers to Bangalore city, even the coastal districts like Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and Uttara Kannada have over 50,000 hectares under coconut plantations but their produce do not cater to the Bangalore market as they have found their high value markets in Mumbai, Pune and Panaji, the coastal region also caters to the value addition industry like canned tender coconut drink apart from the highly potential local markets” Narayanan an agent for the Tamil Nadu supplier of Tender Coconut to Bengaluru.

The scientists in the Krishi Vigyan Kendra Mangaluru say growing areas had different schedule as per their age. “An average tree which lives up to 80 years if the farmers harvest only hardened coconuts, their lifespan will come down by 30 per cent if they harvest the tender coconut, but since the farmers get faster yields and returns as many as 50-55 per cent growers do harvest tender coconuts every year” the scientists feel

“We cannot expect perennial harvest in all the growing areas, but due to some intelligent harvesting practices our growers have managed to keep the supplies steady in summers. But this time they appear to have missed that routine for natural reasons, every year about 20 per cent of the growing areas do not yield in peak season”, says Mahadevappa. (Mahadevappa is the progressive farmer who gave the idea of marketing tender coconut in tetra packs to the Coconut Development Board in 2004).