Kozhikode: Minister for Agriculture Mullakkara Ratnakaran will inaugurate the Centrally sponsored Oil Palm Development Programme (OPDP) in Malabar region at a function at Thiruvambady in Kozhikode district at 3 p.m. on Monday.

Kozhikode district panchayat president K.P. Kunhammedkutty will preside over the inaugural function. P. Krishnaprasad and U.C. Raman, MLAs, and Oil Palm India Limited chairman V. Binu and managing director O.V. Joy and Thiruvambady grama panchayat president Jolly Joseph will participate in the programme.

Immense potential

Cultivation of oil palm is getting popularised among the farmers in the hilly regions of the district. The Centre has come up with programme to promote oil palm cultivation in the country considering the immense potential of the crop.

Malaysia, which has similar climatic conditions that of the State, started cultivating oil palm in large scale substituting rubber in 1965.

During the same period some attempts were also made in the State. However, farmers were reluctant to cultivate the crop due to various reasons. One of them was the heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides in the cultivation of oil palm.

However, the Centre and the State joined together to set up the Oil Palm India Limited in 1977 revolutionising the agriculture sector.

Today oil palm sector is growing into being a parallel industry along with rubber cultivation in the State. Oil Palm India Limited senior manager S. Jayamohan said that the North Kerala initiative had been drawn up after conducting a survey last year. Around 2,000 hectares of land was identified for cultivation of the crop in the hilly regions of Kozhikode district. "But as per the scheme, only 700 hectares would be cultivated as of now. We are receiving more applications for joining the scheme," he said.

Mr. Jayamohan said that the cultivation of oil palm was a success story in the Southern districts of the State. The components of the centrally sponsored scheme are assistance for planting material, assistance for cultivation costs, drip irrigation, training, development of seed gardens and many others.

The OPDP is carried out by the Horticulture Departments and Agriculture Departments of the State Governments concerned.

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