Coconut prices
Coconut prices have gone through the roof! What was abundant at ₹35 is rarely under ₹50. The shop guy said sellers see more demand for tender coconuts that sell for about the same and don't want to wait and deal with the extra effort of dehusking/deshelling and selling, extra money that you get from the fibre notwithstanding.
I've also heard that with more people moving to cities there's a labour shortage and it's a tough skill. I think we need more coconut and other harvesting robots than helpful GR00Ts at home.
Anyway, I was chatting with my jackfruit guy (yep) this morning and he said he can probably get better rates at maarkit (sic).
I asked him to ring me up the next time he goes. He handed me his phone and asked me to call my phone number so it gets added to his list of outgoing calls. I offered to save my number but he said he couldn't read and works with the face-to-last-3-digits association. There's gotta be a better way but it's probably too niche and non-monetizable for anyone to take notice.
It's not just coconut prices, jackfruit too is expensive. His cost price for 4 largish ones was ₹6K.
Back from the tangent, the rate of price increase is worrying. Folks with early onset retirement syndrome, take heed!