Billing for your organic store in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Say where each sack came from, and weigh out exactly what the customer asks for.
Copra, and the islands that sell it
The Nicobar islands built their shops on one crop.
- Trade in copra, dried coconut kernel, has long been the mainstay of the Nicobar islands, which depended almost entirely on copra exports for outside goods (2010 report).
A page for each grower and a line for each lot
The grower from the certified islands sees his lot written down, and comes back
A grower from Car Nicobar brings a lot off the ferry. You enter it as it is weighed, under the name of his island, and he sees it written before he leaves. By evening the count says how much of it is left, so you can tell him whether to bring more, and a grower who is told the truth about his lot comes back with the next basket.
How much of the shelf the islands really fill
With the island's rice and the shipped rice kept apart, the stock and the sales of each show a plain figure at the month's end. You see how much of the rice you sold came from the islands and how much came on the ship. That figure is yours to read to a grower, and to the shopper who asks what is grown here.
A grower's lots against what is left
Each island grower's lots stay on his page with the day and weight. When a grower comes back, you read the page out with him: what he brought, when, and how much is still on your shelf. He leaves knowing his rice was counted like everyone's. The next lot he brings is weighed against the same page.
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When a jar is asked about and the shelf cannot answer
A customer asks where this was grown
A jar of oil or a bag of rice may have come from a grower on the island, or from the mainland on the ship, and the shelf does not say which. You know by memory, until a helper stands at the counter on a day you are away and answers with a guess. The helper's guess and your memory do not always agree, and the grower's name is nowhere on the shelf.
A grower walks in off the ferry with a basket and no notice
A grower arrives with a basket of something that was ready this morning. The shop has to weigh it, set a rate and shelve it before the afternoon, and there is nobody in the shop to do the paperwork. The lot is sold before it is written down.
Two hundred and fifty grams, worked out while she waits
Customers who choose organic often want two hundred and fifty grams, not a pack. You weigh the rice, then work the price from the kilo rate in your head while she waits. On a busy evening the rate you say is not always the rate you meant, and the customer remembers the number you said. She asks again at her next visit, and the rate you said last time is the rate she expects. A rate said wrongly once is hard to take back, because she has told her family what it cost.
Tools for a shop that buys from growers and from the ship
Bills on your phone
Island rice in a cloth bag weighed to the hundred grams, with the weight typed in and the price worked out on the phone.
Low stock warnings
The open sack of an island rice carries a warning when it is down to a few kilos, so you can ask the grower for his next lot.
Daily reports
Which of the island lots sold more than the shipped lots, read day by day.
Questions island organic shop owners ask
A shopper asks if the rice she holds is the certified island rice. What do I say?
Look at the item on her bill: the island's rice is its own item, apart from the ship's rice. If the bill says island rice, it came from the islands, and if it says ship rice, it did not, and she can read that for herself.
A grower's coconut oil comes in a can by the litre and I sell it in small bottles. Can both be on my list?
Yes. Make the can an item counted in litres and the small bottle an item with its own rate and its own count. Note the bottles as you fill them, and each count goes down on its own bill.
The certification for Car Nicobar goods is being renewed. How do I keep lots from before and after apart?
Keep the lots from before the renewal date and the lots after it as two separate items, with the renewal date in each name. A customer who asks which is which reads the answer off the bill, and not off your memory of the shipment.
The first large organic territory, and its yearly renewal
In 2021 the 14,491 hectares of Car Nicobar and the Nancowry group became the first large territory certified organic under the Large Area Certification scheme; chemical inputs are banned there. A shop that sells goods from those islands can tell a customer something that most shops cannot.
On 14 August 2026 the Department of Agriculture began renewing organic certification under PKVY for Car Nicobar and the Nancowrie group of islands. Certification is something that has to be renewed, and a shop that sells these goods hears about it from the growers first.