Campco Ltd has urged arecanut farmers to choose cooperative institutions over private traders while selling the product.

There is an increase in the price for white arecanut, and the trend among some growers is to sell the commodity to private traders who offer a little higher price. In such a situation, the Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative (Campco) Ltd said that there is a need for the growers to support cooperative institutions.

Speaking at the 37th annual general meeting of Campco, Mr K. Padmanabha, President of the cooperative, said that white arecanut is getting good price now. Some private traders, who evade tax, buy the commodity at the doorsteps of the growers paying a little more than what the cooperatives offer. Making an appeal on behalf of all the cooperatives, he said if the growers sell all their stocks to cooperative institutions, the market will be strengthened to a great extent. Private traders will not come to the rescue of growers when there is a crash in the market, he said. During such a fall, cooperatives such as Campco rush to the help of growers. Growers should keep these factors in mind while selling the commodity to the private traders, he said. Many growers said that the continuous rainfall this year has resulted in an increase in fruit rot disease in arecanut plantations. They demanded that the cooperative supply additional quantity of fungicide (cooper sulphate solution).

Mr Padmanabha said that even the cooperative did not expect such a rainfall this year. However, he assured them that steps will be taken to increase the supply of fungicide to growers. A member said that Campco had projected to procure 8,000 tonnes of wet cocoa beans in 2010-11. However, it could procure only 4,860 tonnes. He wanted to know the reason for this decline. Answering this, Mr Padmanabha said there was a decline of 35 per cent in crop production in the last fiscal and this affected the procurement.Campco also released two chocolate products on Friday. Mr Padmanabha said that the new products are available in wafer and éclair segments.

Stating that the cooperative is already marketing chocolate wafer in vanilla flavour, he said the new product is available in orange flavour.

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