Mangaluru: Konkodi Padmanabha, former president of Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative Ltd., said on Monday that arecanut growers need to think seriously about switching over to an alternative crop as arecanut is facing the threat of being banned.

Speaking at a meeting of oil palm growers at Melkar near here, he said that while yellow leaf disease, for which no cure has been found so far, is destroying arecanut plantations on the one hand, farmers were not finding the crop’s cultivation profitable anyway on the other.

He suggested that oil palm growers form a cooperative and create a brand for its produce to capture the market.

G N Ratnakar, a leading oil palm grower from Chikkamagaluru district and a member of the government’s price fixation committee for oil palms, said now he gets an average monthly income of ₹40,000 from oil palms on his five-acre plot.

Mr. Ratnakar said he also cultivated arecanut on 10 acres. He took up oil palm cultivation when the ban on gutka was looming large. He said farmers could no longer depend only on arecanut cultivation as the arecanut market is facing a number of threats.

Vasanth Bhat Todikana, an oil palm grower from near Sullia who switched to oil palm after his arecanut plantation was hit by yellow leaf disease, said region-specific cultivation technology was needed for growing oil palm.