Let's save Lanka's coconut industry

by W. Annesley Sumith Fernando

The simple coconut has caught the face nation of everybody and has become one of the hot topics often subject to discussion. People of all walks of life talk about it, write about it.

We hear that Coconut Cultivation Board is back in action and coming up with a scheme to supply coconut plants, coconut fertilizer subsidies being increased. Steps have been taken to provide a number of relief measures, including interest-free bank loans. Usually coconut takes a lengthy period as long as ten years to grow, mature, and yield nuts. And many more facilities are said to be in the pipeline.

Mica epidemics and the ferocity of the weather gods are often quoted as reasons for the skyrocketing prices in coconut. Another reason is the partitioning of coconut land into plots of 10-15 perches in extent and selling them with least regard to the ensuing disastrous results. Fast buck quick cash is the motive.

Who is responsible for this sorry state of affairs? Is it the people who partitioned the coconut lands and put them on sale or those who grabbed them with not a second thought? Amid all these clamours and callings, one question emerges out prominently: do we have coconut estates? In the Coconut Triangle as fertile as profuse and profile it was in the past.

New varieties of coconuts, yielding nuts in a short period have been introduced to cut down on the number of years. The Coconut Cultivation Board makes a valiant effort to uplift the coconut industry through these measures. In the absence of effective laws to act as a deterrent against wanton destruction of fertile coconut lands, the interested, organised clans and culprits continue their misdeeds against fertile coconut lands without a qualm or feeling of guilt.

The reality is that there are more coconut estates. They have already been partitioned into plots. Neither the economy, nor the prosperity of the country matters to them. A pocket full of cash was their only objective. The glorious coconut triangle has almost been desecrated and destroyed. Gampaha, Puttalam and Kurunegala districts from the Coconut Triangle within the boundaries of which a vibrant industry based on coconut flourished. Kalutara, Galle, Matara and Hambantota districts too had a good portion of fertile lands under coconut cultivation. Sri Lanka produced enough nuts to meet the local demand and the excess was exported. Coconut enjoyed parity status with the other leading export crops, tea and rubber.

Could there be a specific reason for this strange phenomenon, of prices shooting up recently in leaps and bounds? The apparent reason is the generosity of the companies engaged in property development tempered with fine doses of marketing. These companies had to reserve a good portion of the land they purchased for reselling for raids and other basic requirements compelling them to jack up the price of the remaining portion to make good the sum invested in the original land. Further they have to recover projected profits and the costs offered as incentives.

The business-minded property developers in fact are callous and cold blooded. Mercy they know not, and religion is alien to them. They have one motive in common, which is amassing wealth.

Partitioning of coconut lands into plots of 5-15 perches should be forbidden and laws should be implemented. Changes in title if any should cover the entire extent of the land in acres and roods not plots and pieces 5-15 perches. Question might arise regarding the plight of an individual hunting for a plot of land to have a shelter over his head. The Government should intervene and encourage property developers to build high storeyed housing complexes in unfertile abandoned lands. It would far exceed the so called kind of the money-minded property developers.

Destruction of coconut lands would ring the death knell of a number of industries, which provide employment to a host of people especially in the rural areas. Coconut oil mills, coir factories, distilleries and even the simple toddy-tapper would suffer and the problem of unemployment would raise its ugly head.

In the absence of coconut land, economic setbacks await the country. Coconut will be an imported item, a luxury item. Coconut oil and vinegar, brooms and brushes, a housewife's staple necessities, would become imported items. Absence of coconut trees is an absence of free firewood for the village folk who will have a tough time in keeping their fires burning, the Coconut Triangle would become a triangle of brick and concrete.

Conversion of a fertile paddy land into a barren wasteland earns equal condemnation and an approval from the relevant State agencies is a prerequisite to engage in such activities. Similarly felling commercially valuable trees and transporting them by road ways require approval. But it might be through a quirk of destiny, no such authority, no such approval is required in respect of a coconut tree. Felling of coconut trees is carried on with consummate ease, with no restraint and with constraint. The irony is that felling of coconut trees is not a crime against the nation, a transgression of nature.

Let's not procrastinate, but focus on what should be done today.