At Kuppalu village in the coconut-heartland of Tiptur, about 150 km northwest of Bangalore, a group of farmers have been producing virgin coconut oil at their extraction unit for over a year now.

What’s unique is that this small unit is run ‘by farmers and for farmers’ in a region where coconut is the mainstay. Farmers in nearby villages bring their coconut crop to the unit and extract expensive virgin coconut oil at a fraction of the cost normally involved.

It all started off three years ago with a random survey of 2,600 farmer families in Tiptur taluk and their edible oil consumption.

“Knowingly or unknowingly, the farmer families — who mainly grow coconuts — were spending, on average, ₹1 crore a year on edible oil,” says Nanjundappa, a retired professor-turned-farmer in the area. This got them thinking about ways to ensure all this money stayed within the villages, even while promoting healthy eating among the farming community.

Thus was formed the Siri Samruddhi Savayava Krishi Pariwar society, which decided to have its own virgin coconut oil extraction unit. But why virgin coconut oil? “It is considered the healthiest oil with no cholesterol and a high concentration of lauric acid, which has significant health benefits,” says Nanjundappa, who was instrumental in organising, educating and creating awareness among the growers. Interestingly, apart from breast milk, the highest concentration of lauric acid is found in virgin coconut oil. Sold at around ₹400 a kg, mainly in Kerala, virgin coconut oil has a huge export demand.

Scouting for suitable and low-cost technology, the society came across The Coconut Press invented by the Australian farm economist Dan Etherington to produce virgin coconut oil at the farm/village level within an hour of opening a coconut. It entailed a direct micro-expelling process in which grated mature coconut flesh is dried to retain specific moisture content on a flat-bed drier and the oil expelled using a low-pressure manual press.

The Tiptur growers adopted an improvised version of Etherington’s coconut press with the help of a fabricator in Bangalore. “Each unit, made of food-grade steel, costs around ₹60,000. So far, we have sold about five such units,” says Omkar Murthy, the fabricator.

The Tiptur society had the virgin coconut oil tested at a Bangalore lab and the results showed it had no cholesterol. Lauric acid in the oil is estimated at 52 per cent, Nanjundappa said.

Chandra Prakash, an organic farmer in nearby Biligiripalya, gets about 2kg of oil extracted every month at the unit. About 12-15 coconuts yield a kg of virgin coconut oil and the residue can be used in making sweets. The society charges ₹45 per kg and extracts 10-15 kg of oil each day, says Sundaresh, the farmer running the unit.

“It is a good example of empowering rural youth,” says GNS Reddy, a former vice-president at BAIF and currently the CMD of Akshyakalpa Farms and Food Pvt Ltd, engaged in incubating rural entrepreneurship. “These kinds of initiatives have a tremendous impact on micro-economics and profits stay back in villages,” he adds.

There are a few more units operating in the region, but Reddy says they are not enough. “There is a need for institutional support to assist rural youth to turn entrepreneurs,” he says.

While the Kuppalu unit has been catering to growers, efforts are on to set up another unit in a nearby village on a commercial scale, says Nanjundappa. The society, which lacks the financial muscle, is exploring various options.

Vishwanath Anekatte of the Coconut Growers Association feels it is time to revive the age-old culture of oil extraction and boost the rural economy.

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