The Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) will finance a program to certify that Dominican coconuts are not contaminated by a plague known as "Lethal Yellow." Lethal Yellow is a sickness that, once it contaminates a coconut grove, can wipe it out within four years. In 1997 Brazil started blocking imports of Dominican coconuts on the basis of reports that Lethal Yellow had struck in the DR. The import ban remains even though Dominican and international experts have found no basis for the claim. FAO will provide US$89,000 to get official certification of Dominican coconut plantations as free of Lethal Yellow and otherwise healthy; in the face of such certification, import bans by Brazil or any other nation would be illegal under international trade rules. FAO says that it is taking this step because of the important economic role coconut trade plays in the DR. For thousands of Dominicans (estimated at 35,000 in Saman? province alone), coconut cultivation is the main source of income. FAO says that the DR has some four million coconut trees, most located in the Northeast, and its annual coconut production is about 20 million units, 90% of which is produced on small farms. Most of the DR’s coconut production is so healthy that it does not even require the use of pesticides, which makes the FAO confident that this Dominican sector has a future in promoting itself as organic produce.
