By Rathindra Kuruwita

Sri Lanka’s coconut harvest will be low until the end of February 2025 and coconut prices are likely to remain high, Director of the Coconut Research Institute (CRI) Dr. N. S. Aratchige has said.Dr. Aratchige said that the CRI had forecast coconut harvests till the end of April. “Sri Lankan growers usually harvest coconuts once in two months and, according to our calculations, Sri Lankans consume about 300 million coconuts annually. In the January/February harvest period, the yield would only be about 370 million nuts,” she said.

Aratchige said the yield would improve in March and April and that the CRI expected about 480 million nuts in those two months. “At that rate the strain of the demand is lower than it is now. The prices will go down then,” the CRI Director predicted.

Meanwhile, Chairman of the Coconut Cultivation Board (CCB), Saman Dewage said that the state owned about 20,000 acres of coconut and they were now using the yield from these estates to supply nuts to urban markets.

“CCB has about 3,000 acres of coconut while CRI has about 2000 acres. We also have several plantations, such as Kurunegala, and Chilaw plantations. Altogether, the state owns about 20,000 acres of coconut. We are supplying about 200,000 coconuts a day now to urban centres,” he said.

Dewage said that even if growers applied fertiliser to coconut palms in December 2024, they will only see the result in two and a half years. “Even if we start applying fertiliser tomorrow, we will only see results in 2027. This is not an easy crop to revitalise in the short term. For decades we have neglected coconut plantations and we are paying the price,” he said.

The government wanted to increase the production to 4.5 billion coconuts a year and to earn 1.5 billion dollars in export revenue, he said. It has introduced initiatives such as the reinvigoration of the Kapruka Clubs. “In the coming months we will provide a fertiliser subsidy, low interest loans and technical support to develop coconut land. There is a lot more to be done. We also need to replant coconuts to replace the old trees. According to our calculations cultivators need to replant about 10 percent of the trees each year. A lot of trees are old and thus are giving a lower yield,” he said.

Dewage went on to say that in recent years, a significant number of speculators have acquired coconut estates, but many fail to manage them as commercial enterprises.

“They buy the estates for the land. Treating coconuts as a commercial crop requires consistent application of inputs, the cultivation of supplementary crops, and the integration of some level of animal husbandry. The profitability of a coconut estate hinges on the effective combination of these three elements. To be viable, each hectare of coconut must generate at least three million rupees annually. Some estate owners have abandoned their operations after struggling to meet these financial targets,” he said.