The Cocoanut: With reference to its products and cultivation in the Philippines

by William Scrugham Lyon

(4) Perhaps the most serious difficulty the oil maker has to contend with is the continuous discouragement he encounters from the agent of foreign factories, who buys in the open market and, bidding up to nearly the full oil value of the copra, finds an ample manufacturer’s profit paid by the press cake, so valuable abroad, but, unfortunately, practically without sale or value here. The residue from the mill may be utilized both for food and for manure by the oil maker who is a tree owner and who maintains cattle. For either of these purposes its value rates closely up to cotton-seed cake, and the time is not remote when it will be recognized in the Philippines as far too valuable a product to be permitted to be removed from the farm excepting at a price which will permit of the purchase at a less figure of an equivalent in manure. So active are the copra-buying agents in controlling this important branch of the industry, that they refuse to buy the press cake at any price, with the result that, in two instances known to the writer, they have forced the closure of oil-milling plants and driven the oil maker back to his copra.

A young cocoanut tree.

Many copra-making plants in India and Ceylon are now supplied with decorticating, breaking, and evaporating machinery. The process employed in this Archipelago consists in first stripping the ripe fruit of the outer fibrous husk. This is effected by means of a stout, steel spearhead, whose shaft or shank is embedded firmly in the soil to such a depth that the spear point projects above the ground rather less than waist high. The operator then holds the nut in his hands and strikes it upon the spear point, gives it a downward, rotary twist, and thus, with apparent ease, quickly removes the husk. An average operator will husk 1,000 nuts per day, and records have been made of a clean up of as many as 3,000 per day. The work, however, is exceedingly hard, and involves great dexterity and wrist strength.

Another man now takes up the nut and with a bolo strikes it a smart blow in the middle, dividing it into two almost equal parts. These parts are spread out and exposed to the sun for a few hours, or such time as may be necessary to cause the fleshy albumen to contract and shrink away from the hard outer shell, so that the meat may be easily detached with the fingers.

Weather permitting, the meat thus secured is sun dried for a day and then subjected to the heat of a slow fire for several hours. In some countries this drying is now effected by hot-air driers, and a very white and valuable product secured; but in the Philippines the universal practice is to spread out the copra upon what may be called a bamboo grill, over a smoky fire made of the shells and husks, just sufficient heat being maintained not to set fire to the bamboo. The halves, when dried, are broken by hand into still smaller irregular fragments, and subjected to one or two days of sun bath. By this time the moisture has been so thoroughly expelled that the copra is now ready to be sacked or baled and stored away for shipment or use.

All modern cocoanut-oil mills are supplied with a decorticator armed with revolving discs that tear or cut through the husk longitudinally, freeing the nut from its outer covering and leaving the latter in the best possible condition for the subsequent extraction of its fiber. This decorticator is fed from a hopper and is made of a size and capacity to husk from 500 to 1,000 nuts per hour.

Rasping and grinding machinery of many patterns and makes, for reducing the meat to a pulp, is used in India, Ceylon, and China; and, although far more expeditious, offers no improvements, so far as concerns the condition to which the meats are reduced, over the methods followed in the Philippines. Here the fleshy halves of the meat are held by hand against a rapidly revolving, half-spherical knife blade which scrapes and shaves the flesh down to a fine degree of comminution. The resulting mass is then macerated in a little water and placed in bags and subjected to pressure, and the milky juice which flows therefrom is collected in receivers placed below. This is now drawn off into boilers and cooked until the clear oil is concentrated upon the surface. The oil is then skimmed off and is ready for market.

The process outlined above is very wasteful. The processes I have seen in operation are very inadequate, and I estimate that, not less than 10 per cent of the oil goes to loss in the press cake. This is a loss that does not occur in establishments equipped with the best hydraulic presses. It is true that very heavy pressure carries through much coloring matter not withdrawn by the primitive native mill, and that the oil is consequently darker, and sooner undergoes decomposition; but modern mills are now supplied with filtration plants through which this objection is practically overcome.

The principles of the above process are daily reproduced in thousands of Filipino homes, where the hand rasping of the nut, the expression of the milky juice through coarse cloth, its subsequent boiling down in an open pan, and the final skimming off of the oil are in common practice. Notwithstanding the cheapness of labor, it is only by employing a mill well equipped with decorticating, rasping, hydraulic crushing, and steam-boiling machinery, and with facilities to convert the residue to feeding or other uses, that one may hopefully enter the field of oil manufacture in these Islands in competition with copra buyers.