Evergreen Coconut Communities - Growing Tourist Attractions

As a crop commodity coconut plays a major role in human life. For every edible item or every purpose, people find the need for one or the other coconut parts inevitable.

Making livelihood

Coconut forms a basic livelihood building component of the families in the coconut growing regions of the world. Predominantly, the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, India, Maldives, and a few more South Asian island countries have their life interwoven with coconut commodities.

Basic raw commodity

One of the important items of trade in the agricultural commodity market in these regions is the coconut. How it influences the life of people in the region is very interesting to learn. One of our friend from Kerala in India, soon after getting up in the morning smears coconut oil, on his hair on the head. Coconut oil is famous in many parts of the globe as hair oil. Coconut oil is also a valuable edible cooking oil commodity in these markets. In most of the edible item preparations, he and other local people use 10 to 20% of coconut. To mention as an example, in Indian bread (commonly called dosa), where rice is basic raw material, in which, along with the rice, 20% of coconut gratings are added at the time of preparing the dosa batter, for taste and softness. Many of the confectionery and sweet items are prepared out of the coconut. The most popular ones are coconut burfi and coconut ladoo. Most of the dishes used for the meal include coconut is included in gratings, ground or oil form.

With the growing consciousness of water and soil conservation, the coconut husk is very useful in preserving the moisture content of the soil. It is used as a very good mulch in the crop basins.

Crop of trade and commerce

Traders retailers and middleman coconut value chain. Raw material procurement local communities sale large-scale commodity collection and transportation to large trade houses and further processing for preparation of various coconut products faces of coconut commodity value chain.

The husk fibres are strong and are used for several household items and rope making. Once upon a time, South Kerala was a world supplier of coir rope. Due to the invasion of plastic to every sector, coir mats and coir ropes are replaced by nylon mats and ropes.

Coconut is also sold as a tender coconut health drink in cities roadside stalls and near hospitals. Tender coconut fetches more earning than mature coconut. There is growing awareness that instead of soft drinks and carbonated drinks, natural health drinks such as tender coconut water, Nata de Coco are gaining popularity. Snowball tender coconuts are also available in Indonesia, the Philippines, etc.

Health resorts

Natural healing and physiotherapy virgin coconut oil play a prominent role because of its antioxidant properties. And therefore, it is used in health spas and nature cure centres for body massage. There are a large number of Ecotourism centres with rejuvenation health treatment camps and resorts available in these regions. In South India, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu are well known for natural treatment health resorts by the rivers and beaches. These provide relaxing holidays along with health improvement amidst natural coconut groves.

Whether it is the traditional coconut-based recipes or the coconut oil treatment, coconut forms parts and parcel of these rejuvenation camps. Compared to ocean islands, backwater resorts are very safe locations for ecotourism due to less affected by storms and cyclones.

Coconut Islands and beaches

In many of the river mouth islands, there are naturally growing coconut palms. These were formed because of the coconut seed brought by the floods and rainwater flow to these islands during rainy season growing into trees. In these Islands and beaches, coconut palms bend outward in the form of arch extending outwards. In the islands, coconuts are very high yielding due to the availability of fertile soil and plenty of water. We have island resorts also coming up, forming great ecotourism destinations these days. Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India, Bangkok in Thailand, and Bali in Indonesia, Seychelles Islands have coconut beach attractions. Even though reaching islands is a bit difficult, they are very attractive due to oceanic blues, yellow sands and evergreen groves giving perfect nature and beauty amalgamation.

Part and parcel of traditional life

When it is grown for more than hundreds of years in a region, it becomes part of the community tradition. Due to its consistent association with human life, it makes a stronghold and forms an inseparable bond with the livelihood of people.

At this stage, people don't care for the profit or loss out of the commodity. In Kerala state where there is hardly any space for agriculture due to lack of cropping space. Because of the residences of the growing population, there is a shortage of land area. However, people have an attachment to the coconut palm and grow at least one or two coconut palms in their limited home yard space.

Thus, whether or not people afford to cultivate or don’t know how to climb up on a tree, there is an affinity because of tradition. Thus we have gods own destinations, enjoyable round the year.