Ball copra stocking toppled in Kerala leaving farmers in distress

Vadakara: Even as the ball copra is facing a steep price drop, its stocking for securing minimum support price is being toppled in Kerala. 

The Centre had given permission to stock 3,000 tonnes copra at a rate of Rs 12,000 per quintal on March 26. The stocking has not begun even after one and a half months. 

What is required is to locate the ball copra production centres and to open stocking centres there itself.  However, no such measures have been taken in that direction. Nobody has any clue about the criteria for stocking and where to stock them. 
 
Karnataka stocked a total of 25,545 tonne copra within one and a half months, causing suspicion that the stocking in Kerala is being toppled.

The Centre has granted permission to stock both copra and ball copra on the same day–30,000 tonne copra and 3,000 tonne ball copra. It was announced that the stocking will begin from April 1.  

Three months of stocking, later the sale and next three months of stocking is the new way of the NAFED. However, one and a half months were lost.

The State has entrusted Vegetable and Fruit Promotion Council Keralam (VFPCK) and Marketfed for the copra stocking. Initially they said that they would stock ball copra as well. However, nothing was mentioned about copra stocking when VFPCK invited applications for agricultural registration over Copra stocking recently.

Most of the ball copra in the State is produced in Kozhikode, mainly in Vadakara. However, there are no stocking centres in these areas. There is  a raw coconut stocking unit of VFPCK at Maniyur in Vadakara Taluk. It is not sure if ball copra is stocked there.

A loss of Rs 9.8 Cr

At  present, the price of ball copra in Vadakara market is Rs 8800 per qunital. The MSP is at Rs 12,000. If 3,000 tonnes of copra was stocked, then the farmers would have got a gain of Rs 9.60 crore.