Small Scale Integrated Processing And Value Addition As A Way To Increase Small Holder Farmers Income
The paper highlights the success story of Kerala Malanadu Cooperative Society in India which is engaged in the production, processing and marketing of different value added products from coconut for more than a decade. The author has a field level experience as a coconut farmer and as the president of the well known Farmer’s Co-operative Marketing Society. The paper points to the possibilities of gaining additional income through integrated processing of value added products from coconut through co-operative movement of small farmers. Farmers in each country have been experiencing their own specific problems in farming, post harvesting, marketing techniques and methodologies. It said that the role of the farmer is significantly small in the production and marketing of products where value addition did not figure prominently in the field strategies of coconut farmers. In the context of the new millennium, one need to analysis the definite problems of the coconut farmers, traders, processors, as well as the changing attitudes, aptitudes, tastes and preferences of the consumer segment at the global levels. The present era is believed to be an era of consumers and those who can satisfy the consumer qualitatively with low price can then survive and stay in business. The paper concludes that through small scale integrated processing and value addition, small and medium farmers can generate extra incomes and escape themselves from the excessive and recurrent price fluctuations.