Willingness of Coconut Growers to Join Farmer Producer Companies in Western Tamil Nadu–An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Coconut, a versatile crop called as ‘Kalpaviriksha’ – A tree of Heaven. India, with the rich biodiversity of coconut, is the largest producer with 33.02 percent share or 22167 million nuts of the world's largest production of 67128 million nuts. But still, the farmers facing difficulties in marketing coconut. The constraints pertaining to the marketing of coconut were lack of government procurement system, lack of co-operative marketing, lack of proper market information, monopoly of market intermediaries, fluctuation in market price, and high commission among intermediaries were the major problems faced by the coconut growers.  This study analyses the perception and preference of coconut farmers in joining coconut producer companies in the Western Tamil Nadu. Descriptive analysis and Garret raking technique has been used and concluded that price provided by the FPC was good and fair enough compared to the market price, which was the major reason for joining the FPC and lack of awareness on benefits obtained, share capital contribution requirement, and benefits not distributed evenly are the major problem in not joining the FPCs.