Black Immigrant Daily News
Coconut farmers across the island are calling on the Coconut Industry Board (CIB) to increase the price it buys the fruit from the present $65.
The growers say they can get a wholesale rate of $90 per coconut elsewhere instead of selling to the CIB for use in the retail shop that the board operates on Waterloo Road in St Andrew.
“We must address the price of coconuts that we buy from the growers. If we do not address the price, we will not have an industry”, stated outgoing CIB director AA Bobby Pottinger to much applause at the coconut growers’ annual meeting last Saturday, August 20.
Pottinger, a former Custos of St Mary and former President of the Jamaica Agricultural Society, said he is able to sell coconuts from his farm for $90 each to vendors in Ocho Rios.
Speaking at the meeting at the Medallion Hall hotel in St Andrew, Pottinger announced that he would soon be stepping down as a director of the CIB after 27 years. He will join veteran attorney-at-law Frank Phipps, QC, who has also retired as a CIB director.
The former custos said the CIB needs to be more active in marketing coconut water and should be supplying all the sports camps and hospitals, as it did in the past.
However, CIB general manager Shaun Cameron, while noting the call for a price increase, said farmers registered with the CIB receive many benefits which help them establish their farms.
These benefits include free fertilizer and seedlings, weed grants and technical expertise from the team scientists.
“You can become a registered farmer free of cost once you own the land and it is suitable for growing coconuts”, Cameron told Loop News.
He noted that the CIB shop sells coconut water for $1,500 per gallon, which is below its competitors’ rate of between $1,800 and $2,000 per gallon.
Coconut growers pay keen attention to the annual growers’ meeting on August 20, 2022.
Also speaking at the meeting, director Nicholas Jones encouraged farmers to register with the CIB, and highlighted other benefits such as assistance in tackling the lethal yellowing disease, and no import duties on tree climbing equipment.
Jones disclosed that the CIB is establishing a drop-off facility in St Mary to ease transportation costs and develop a business model guide for new and existing growers.
“The coconut industry continues to grow in the areas of coconut water bottling, baked goods, ice cream and beverages. There’s also a market for coconut meat, coconut oil, lumber and coir”, Jones said.
He said the CIB intended to further expand the industry through research, private-public partnerships, plant breeding disease management and identification of the best soil types for growing.
Jamaica’s primary coconut producing parishes are St Mary, Portland, St Thomas and St Catherine.
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