This is my very first experience with 'home' grown coconuts and I have no idea if it's typical, interesting or even future 'food for thought'. Maybe others have some experience and hopefully some wisdom that they are be willing to share. Over time we've purchased quite a lot of land in the area around where the most of my wife's family are living. We've received an interesting update about the latest parcel we bought. It wasn't huge, just over 1.8 hectares. Interestingly it came with coconut trees along with other trees and bushes etc. Now the original idea was to clear the area and let some of the family build a couple of houses (well nippa houses) and some land on which to grow vegatables for both the table and profit. Here's the story. We discovered that coconut trees are protected. Well, basically you need to secure a permit to cut them down. {Important Fact} Now, during the time it has taken to actually secure an official permit without resorting to 'the usual', (about one year),the family have harvested 7200 nuts from the 138 trees My dear sis-in-law (bless her) has kept some amazing records. In the past year, they managed to get a recorded total of 7200 coconuts.My sis-in-law said it's probably quite a bit more than that but not everyone tells the exact number and plenty are gathering the young coconut and also making tuba etc etc. She said they harvested themselves by combination of fallers and climbing to cut them down. They sold the 'natural' untouched fruits to a single 'agent' for P6.0 per kilo. That she said came in at just over P55k, not too bad. The point is she told me that during the next year if they leave the trees, harvest the fruits then process into copra before selling to the agent, she can get P40 per kilo. She reckons that processing to copra next year will likely yield 2500 kilo from over 9000k natural which means P100k potentially. The issue is that processing to copra means a lot more labour since each fruit needs to be split and dried. But it's almost a doubling of income. I'm inclined to say OK go ahead but don't expect too much as labour costs will eat into profits. But, hey what an amazing result just whilst waiting for a permit to cut down the trees. I think it's a better bet than growing vegatables, and still there's room for a couple nippa houses once the rubbish has been cleared. Also, that land has no restriction for building. Maybe there are better processing routes or maybe it's better to sell unharvested mature coconuts. Hmmm plenty to learn about coconut farming. Although it's still not a great business in western terms, but nice fun for the family who really enjoy the land,the tuba and the coconuts.
