Coconut Board heads uptown for AGM

There will be a change of venue for this year’s annual general meeting (AGM) of the Coconut Industry Board (CIB), which is set for 10 a.m. on Saturday at the Medallion Hall Hotel, St Andrew, and not the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston, where hundreds of coconut farmers usually congregate to air their concerns and get updates on the industry.

This will be the first AGM since 2019 due to the COVID-19 protocols, which included restrictions on public gatherings.

General Manager Shaun Cameron explained that the change was due to the unavailability of their usual venue, as refurbishing work at the Jamaica Conference is ongoing.

That venue will not be ready until September.

The CIB will be providing transportation for its members from East Parade, downtown Kingston, to the Medallion Hall Hotel by way of a Jamaica Urban Transit Company bus, which will show ‘COCONUT INDUSTRY BOARD’ on its display panel. The bus is scheduled to leave East Parade at 8:30a.m. , then depart the Medallion Hall Hotel at 1:30p.m. for East Parade.

The CIB is encouraging all coconut farmers to try and attend in person, even though the AGM will be held in a hybrid format, with presentations also carried online.

Coconut production continues to be negatively impacted by the lack of fertiliser, improper agronomic practices, theft of dry and jelly coconuts, and the deaths of fruit-bearing coconut trees, due to lethal yellowing and other diseases, according to the notice from the board about the annual general meeting.

Despite the combination of factors negatively affecting bearing, the production of coconuts improved over last year and it is calculated that 121 million nuts were harvested, an improvement over the 108 million nuts for 2020.

At December 31, 2021, it was estimated that 16,663 hectares of land were in coconut production, with the number of hectares with bearing coconut trees put at 16,647.

At the end of the year, it was also estimated that there were 3,322,626 coconut trees on the island. The number of those which over seven years old and should have been bearing is calculated at 3,215,076.

Due to faulty agronomic practices, however, some were not bearing.

According to Cameron, going forward this is an issue that the board will be looking to address in a structured way.

“One of the things that we realise is that the farmers are not optimising their fertilisation and irrigation techniques, so we have to mitigate that risk by planning training sessions for them, and stressing the importance of properly and adequately (nurturing) the coconut trees from the seedling stage, going straight up. It is something that we are looking into for the upcoming operational year,” he told The Gleaner.

According to Cameron, lethal yellowing remains an issue of concern for the board’s research team, headed by plant pathologist Dr Wayne Myrie.

“It is always a major concern, but Dr Myrie and the team have the best solutions, and we are now able to manage the lethal yellowing destruction far better than we did in the past, and that is empowering our farmers and field advisory officers on how to spot the disease. So as soon as they find a tree, they advise us and we are able to deal with it before it can spread to the rest of the orchard. Planting a mix of varieties is also another solution, because our Maypan and Malayan Green were bred to be somewhat resistant to lethal yellowing. So there are some sites where we actually have Maypan and Malayan Green growing successfully in hot lethal yellowing zones.

“What the research team is looking to do now is to see what sort of practices, and under what environmental conditions these trees consistently thrive and then advise our farmers on how best to replicate these successful measures. Also, we are expanding our tissue culture research by partnering with Mexico, through the ITC project, to get varieties which are more resistant to lethal yellowing,” Cameron said.