From Coconut to Oud: India’s High-Value Crop Bet Could Reshape Rural Income for Millions of Farmers
The Farmer Who Stopped Growing Rice Govind Nair farmed rice on three acres in coastal Kerala for most of his working life. In 2022, following a government horticulture scheme, he converted one of those acres to coconut cultivation and intercropped it with cocoa. By 2025, the intercropped acre was generating nearly twice the income of…