Mahendran Ravishankar left a career as a mechanical engineer to return to his family’s coconut farm in Meenakshipuram, near Palakkad, and has since built an intercropping system that earns him roughly Rs 2,400 to Rs 2,800 (about £22 to £26) per coconut tree each year, far above what the palms alone would bring. Onmanorama reported on 19 October 2026 that Ravishankar now manages around 600 coconut palms interplanted with avocado, nutmeg, black pepper and an on-farm bio-fertiliser unit.
Ravishankar grows ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research varieties Arka Supreme and Arka Ravi avocado beneath the coconut canopy, alongside a nutmeg type known locally as “Round Leaf” and named black pepper cultivars including Karimunda and Panniyur-1. Each crop occupies a different layer of the coconut grove, from pepper vines climbing the palm trunks to nutmeg and avocado filling the mid-canopy, so the land produces several harvests from the same plot rather than coconuts alone.
The approach echoes a long tradition of multi-tier cropping in Kerala’s coconut belt, where falling coconut prices and rising labour costs have pushed many smallholders to look for additional income from the same land rather than expanding acreage, which is rarely an option in the state’s fragmented landholdings.
Why the returns add up
Avocado has become an increasingly valuable crop in parts of Kerala as demand grows from urban markets and the Gulf diaspora trade, giving growers like Ravishankar a premium return relative to coconut or rubber. Black pepper, meanwhile, has traded near decade-high prices in Kerala through much of 2026 as supply has tightened, which has made it an attractive intercrop for growers with existing palm trunks to train vines on. Nutmeg adds a third income stream with its own separate harvest calendar, spreading Ravishankar’s cash flow across the year instead of concentrating it around a single coconut harvest.
Ravishankar also runs an on-farm bio-fertiliser unit, which cuts his dependence on purchased chemical inputs and lets him recycle farm waste back into the soil beneath all four crops. Onmanorama’s report did not specify the unit’s output or exact savings, though farmers running similar systems elsewhere in Kerala have cited lower input costs as one of the main financial benefits of composting on-site rather than buying fertiliser.
A model other smallholders are watching
Kerala’s agriculture department has previously encouraged coconut farmers to diversify into intercropping as coconut prices have fluctuated and the state’s farm workforce has aged, with younger family members often preferring other work. Ravishankar’s switch from engineering to farming runs against that trend, and his results offer a concrete example of what diversified smallholdings can earn when multiple crops are layered onto the same plot rather than relying on one commodity.
Whether the model scales beyond individual enterprising farmers depends partly on access to the specific avocado and pepper varieties Ravishankar uses, many of which require nursery stock from ICAR institutes rather than open markets. For now, his farm stands as a working example rather than a formal government programme, one increasingly cited by other coconut growers in the district weighing similar changes to their own land. His diversification route contrasts with two other Fourth Plate stories this week on robotic pollination and zero-till seeding, which raise farm income through machinery rather than through growing a wider mix of crops.
