VELLORE: The Gudiyattam Taluk Agricultural Producers Cooperative Marketing Society is all set togo high-tech as it becomes the first society in the district to provide solar dryer facility to its members for converting coconuts into value-added copra. The Rs 5.89 lakh facility is funded by a grant from National Agricultural Development Agency.According to the Joint Registrar of Societies J Malarvizhi, the new venture wo-uld be ready by March-end and is expected to help coconut farmers to get better price if they added value by converting the nuts into copra. There are more than 10,000 farmers cultivating coconut in the region and of them over 6,700 are members of the society. Since the price of coconut in the open market is subjected to vagaries, most often decided by the middlemen and the traders, the farmers were not able to get good price for their produce. The solar drying unit would empower them with better marketability as the price of copra is fixed by the state government under the Price Supporter Scheme, she added.Besides Gudiyattam, 12 other locations across the state including Theni, Tiru-nelveli, Krishnagiri, Dindi-gul, Erode, Madurai, Coimbatore and Tirupur where the NADP is funding similar solar dryer units through the respective Cooperative Marketing Societies, are expected to benefit.Interestingly, the Gudiyattam society started in 1983 and has been since functioning on a self-sustaining basis. The farmers attached to the society have been innovative and willing to explore new avenues. Natarajan, secretary of the society, said that the members were impressed by the idea of solar dryer when they had visited a couple of units in private farms in Tirupur last year. The advantage of using a solar dryer is that it ensures uniform heating (55 to 60 degrees Celsius) both during day and night hours with controlled humidity, fully protected from dust, rains and other damages, and ensures cost cutting on labour. On an average it took around 48 hours for a batch of 4,000 pieces of nuts to get converted into copra, he added.The society has proposed to procure around 10,000 coconuts per week from the farmers directly. The price paid to the farmers would be more than the prevailing market rate so that it helps them economically. The farmers have the option to take back copra after paying the society the service charges. Some of the farmers in Gudiyattam, while hailing the initiative taken by the cooperative society, underlined the need for transport facility to take the coconut to the solar dryer unit from their farms. Some farmers could be provided with loan facilities to purchase tractors with trailers, which could be used for this purpose. The society could also train unemployed youth as tree climbers to tide over the increasing problem of dearth of climbers in the region.The Gudiyattam society has already established a special shandy for the benefit of cotton farmers in the locality some three months back, where traders from Tirupur, Erode etc purchase the produce directly from the farmers based on the prevailing market rate through tender procedure.
Comments
0 comment