Why key to coconut cultivation today is sustainability, not productivity Premium

Explore how sustainability, rather than productivity, is crucial for the future of coconut cultivation amidst climate challenges.

The 2026-27 Union budget announced a ‘Coconut Promotion Scheme’ with the primary aim of improving productivity by rejuvenating old, non-productive gardens with high yielding coconut varieties and establishing new plantations along the coast. The farming community has welcomed the announcement.

The Coconut Development Board (CDB) is already implementing a similar scheme, which has helped rejuvenate old gardens and expanded cultivation into non-traditional areas, including in parts of Gujarat, Assam, and other non-peninsular regions — sufficient to partially offset the widespread destruction of coconut palms in Kerala and Tamil Nadu by disease.

India is the world’s largest producer and consumer of coconuts. The domestic prices of coconut and tender coconut remain far higher than prevailing international prices even though the productivity per palm in India is already higher than in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Indonesia. In places like Anaimalai in Tamil Nadu, dwarf x tall hybrid palms regularly produce 250-300 tender coconuts per tree.

Today, climate change and disease are greater concerns than productivity. Research by the Central Plantation Crops Research Institute (CPCRI) has projected that temperatures in regions with plantations may rise by 1.6-2.1°C by 2050 and up to 3.2 °C by 2070. Higher temperature without a significant change in the rainfall levels will increase the vapour pressure deficit and intensify drought stress.

Studies have also found that large parts of interior peninsular India, including parts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, along with the south interior region of Tamil Nadu and the east coasts could become less suitable for coconut cultivation in the coming decades as a result.

The CPCRI has found that coconut can still be cultivated along the Western Ghats belt in Kerala, coastal Karnataka, and western Tamil Nadu even during the high temperature regimes. However, these regions are beset by root wilt disease; in Alappuzha and Pollachi districts, the coconut landscape has been completely devastated.