Coconut is a typical case of under-exploitation of a plant of high economic potential. The plant is unique in the sense that it is capable of meeting all the basic needs of food, fibre, fuel, timber and even animal feed.

Still, the growers are getting disenchanted with it. As a result, while overall coconut production has been stagnating at around 12 billion nuts a year since the early 1990s, the country's average productivity has not gone beyond about 7,000 nuts per hectare harvested way back in the early 1950s. And this is despite the existence of the Coconut Development Board since 1981 and the technology mission on coconut launched in 2001-02.

This is a worrisome issue. For, it holds a crucial place in the livelihood security of small and marginal landholders in the entire coastal belt. This, of course, is more so in the southern states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, some of which have reported suicides by farmers.

Indeed, the genesis of coconut's misfortune can be traced to the failure to capitalise on the diversified applications that this plant lends itself to. Its cultivation and processing has remained by and large copra-centric. The use of its oil as a cooking medium has not spread beyond Kerala and its adjoining areas.

The industrial use of coconut oil, which could have sustained its cultivation, has been on the decline, largely due to the availability of relatively cheaper alternatives. Various other oils extracted from seeds of wild plants, as also rice bran oil, have replaced the relatively high-priced coconut oil in most industrial applications. The use of coconut oil in soap-making, for instance, which was almost 25 per cent at one stage, has now dropped to a mere 5 per cent.

Besides, heavy imports of palm oil at deliberately-kept low import duties have provided tough competition to coconut oil in terms of prices. And where other coconut products and their possible commercial uses are concerned, private investment has not come to the desired extent to exploit the potential. Nor has enough been done to expand their domestic market or fully tap their export potential.

This apart, there are other factors as well that have plagued coconut cultivation. One of the most significant among them is the emergence of dreaded pests and diseases, notably root wilt, ganoderma and tatipaka. The root wilt malady, confined earlier largely to Kerala, has now spread even to parts of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Though this disease does not kill the plants, it curtails their production capacity severely. Unfortunately, no effective cure for this has yet been found, despite intensive efforts being made by the scientists of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and state agriculture universities. The farmers, therefore, mostly have to cut down the diseased plants, suffering huge losses in the process.

However, the efforts of the scientists have succeeded in curbing the menace of another equally destructive pest, eriophyd mite, to a significant extent. In the 1990s, this pest used to cause formidable losses by deteriorating the quality and quantity of the husk fibre, besides lowering copra yield by causing the nuts to shrink.

Moreover, though several new high-yielding hybrids of coconut have been evolved by the ICAR's Central Plantation Crops Research Institute and some farm universities, these have not been able to command much area for want of adequate availability of planting material.

Besides, there are problems even in the marketing of coconut products. Their prices, too, tend to be determined by the prices of coconut oil, which fluctuate widely, depending on the demand-supply equation and competition from other oils. Though copra is now allowed to be traded in the futures market, that has not led to either price stability or price discovery as the government fixes the minimum support prices.

What is needed under the circumstances, is greater investment in research and development, especially in diversification of coconut use. The reduction in costs and improvement in quality of coconut-based products is a must to increase their demand. Private investment will come only if better technology is generated in the public sector for the production of innovative coconut-based products at competitive costs.

Market promotion for edible coconut products is another crucial aspect that needs attention. The public perception, especially outside the southern states, that coconut products are unhealthy needs to be altered through promotional campaigns to generate fresh demand and stabilise the coconut sector economy.