70 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Gross income from coconut Rs. 18,706 Paid cost of production Rs. 6,004 Of which : Tilling labour cost @ 20 paise Rs. 640 Chemical fertilizer cost Rs. 390 Chemical fertilizer application labour cost Rs. 160 Farm yard manure Rs. 2225 Farm yard manure application labour cost Rs. 160 Plucking cost Rs. 1282 Gathering cost Rs. 697 Pesticides use Rs. 450 This large farmer did not have any imputed cost. His household expenditure was 12,900 rupees which he met mainly from coconut. Thus we see that while the tiny farmer had debts and could not sustain his family from coconut cultivation, the small farmer had to depend on non-agricultural sources for his livelihood. The medium farmer on the other hand just managed to make both ends meet, while the large farmer had enough savings after allfhis expenditure was met. Action Programme for the Seventh Plan If processing units are controlled by cultivators, price control and artificial scarcity can be avoided because middlemen and processors can be eliminated. Also to face the powerful middlemen, the cocount growers in the state should join into a cooperative or cooperatives. And to remove the hold on coconut cultivators by merchants, the Coconut Development Board or a state-wide co-operative or a government sponsored system should take over the purchasing of coconut from the farms. To find a final eolation to the problem of decline in yield and thus of the increasing uneconomic nature of coconut cultivation, an effective cure should be found for the root-wilt. The coconut oil import policy of the central government has also been found to adversely affect the coconut cultivators of Kerala and the coconut oil manufacturing units in the small scale sector. Therefore the central government should adopt a coconut oil import policy which does not adversely affect the Kerala economy. AJOY MATHEW CESP, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. 1. See P. S. George, The Coconut Economy of Kerala (An Analysis of Production trends and projections) Ed. M.A. Oommen, Kerala Economy Since Independence, Oxford and IBH Publishing House, 1979. 2. Ibid. 3. See Report of the Committee on Commodity Taxation, Government of Kerala, 1979. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. P.S, George, op. cit,