Coconut Cropping Systems in Kerala — A Facelift with Increased Income and Improved Input-use Efficiency

The paper has identified the cropping systems in different agro-ecological zones of Kerala during the period 2012–2014. The data have been collected from coconut farmers who followed different crops combinations using a pre-scheduled pre-structured questionnaire. For analysis, the software Frontier 4.1 was used. The study has found that the combination coconut-arecanut-pepper provides the highest net income of 3.87 lakh/ha. The most labour-intensive system was coconut-arecanut-nutmeg-pepper and this yielded the highest gross returns per hectare. The highest net income was realized from the combination of coconut-arecanut-nutmeg ( 5.38 lakh/ha), while the highest B:C ratio (10.2) was in coconut-arecanut-pepper. The study has revealed that the combination of coconut and banana was best in terms of lower investment and higher net returns. A stochastic logged frontier production function was fitted to estimate the efficiency of input-use in the cropping systems. The efficiency of input-use in coconut based cropping systems was found to be 99.6 per cent.