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The Coconut Development Board (CDB) hopes that its focus on North-Eastern States will help it expand the area of cultivation there.
In an informal chat with BusinessLine on the sidelines of a farmers’ meeting in Mangaluru recently, TK Jose, CDB Chairman, said that coconut cultivation is happening in the seven north-eastern states of India.
Stating that coconut was grown in some places in the region long back, he said it was not an organised cultivation earlier. Area expansion is happening on a major scale in States such as Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya.
He said the expansion of coconut plantations was to the extent of around 50,000 hectares in Meghalaya, and around 40,000 hectares each in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam in the last four years.
People there are taking up activities such as raising nucleus seed gardens and plants in a big way in the last three-four years, he said.
Giving the example of a model developed by the district collector of Bongaigaon in Assam to expand area of cultivation, he said the district identified around 1,000 acres of tribal land for this. Funds from NREGS, tribal development fund and CDB and Spices Board were put together. Under this model, cocoa cultivation was taken up as an inter-crop.
Land development and fencing were done under NREGS. The farmers got coconut seedlings free of cost under the board’s area expansion programme.
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