Coconut and Oil Palm: A Comparison

Summed up, there is not much difference, economically, between the cultivation of coconuts and of oil palms.

Each is grown at about 55 to the acre. The oil palm comes into full production two or three years sooner than the coconut.

Where a good coconut plantation, 12 years old, will give about 8 cwt. of copra to the acre, an oil palm plantation, eight years old, will give 1 ton of palm oil and 5 cwt. of kermels per acre.

Labour is about the same. The meat has to be extracted from the coconut and dried. The pulp (producing palm oil) has to be extracted from the fruit of the palm, and the kernels have to be broken.

Dried copra produces an average of 67 per cent. and palm kernels an average of 50 per cent. good oil. The value of the respective oils is about the same—sometimes one, sometimes the other, is most highly quoted. Each is subject to acidity, the degree of acidity being governed by the care taken in preparing the copra or the kernels for export.

Palm kernel oil has a strong flavour that is absent from coconut oil, giving the latter greater value to soapmakers.

The chief byproduct from each, after the extraction of the oil, is equally valuable as a food for stock.

In Hamburg, on August 1, 1930, palm oil was quoted at £33 per ton; palm kernel oil at £26/15/-; and coconut oil at £28/17/- per ton.

Apparently, it comes down to this—The coconut has an advantage because it gives a higher percentage of oil; but the oil palm makes up for this by giving palm oil (from the pulp of the fruit) as well as kernel oil. It looks like an even break; but that does not get rid of the disturbing fact that palm kernel oil, which so closely resembles coconut oil, is being produced in enormous and ever-increasing quantities. ———