The Coconut-Koko

This introductory post is the first one in a series of posts about the coconut and how it has impacted our life as Seychellois. Other posts will include topics like, how to climb a coconut tree, how to choose your coconut, how to husk a coconut, how to make coconut milk and cream, how to tap toddy, how to make coconut vinegar, plus many more.

Origin

The word, “coconut” came from the Portuguese and Spanish word, “coco” which means monkey face. The origin of coconuts is subjective to this very day, but it is believed to have originated in the Indian-Indonesia region. From there, it floated in the ocean establishing itself in Southeast Asia to Madagascar and coastal East Africa. The coconut has the capacity to travel up to 3,000 miles by sea and still have the ability to germinate.

Coconut Migration (credit Kenneth Olsen/WUSTL)

After many years, the Indian Ocean coconut was eventually brought into the New World by the Europeans. In particular, the Portuguese brought the coconuts to the West Coast of Africa.

Eventually, the coconuts made its way to the Caribbean and coastal Brazil. It is believed that the cultivation of coconuts can be traced as far back as 2,250 years ago. Today, it flourishes in tropical areas and islands particularly south of the Equator including the Seychelles.

Ancient drawing of coconuts and various crops being carried along the Indian Ocean

The Coconut Tree

The coconut is a tall slender tropic palm. The nodded, upright unbranched stem, up to 60 cm in diameter, can rise up to 30 meters, ending in an impressive crown of pinnate leaves which may be 6 meters in length. Every leaf remains greens for about three years, then drops off and leaves a scar on the stem. New foliage is developed continuously in the terminal bud. The male and female flowers occur in spadices. Every inflorescence gives rise to as many as twenty fruits, and a tree in full production can produce up to a hundred and twenty fruits a year.

Coconut Trees in Seychelles

Most of the coconuts planted in the Seychelles are the local Talls.

These Talls are made up of a number of different varieties characterized by different nut sizes, shapes and productivity but with no apparent differences in tree morphology.

Among the common local varieties planted are koko ble, koko zonn, koko rezen, koko leo and koko lerin.

Koko Selan

In a bid to boost coconut production, Seychelles imported some 10,000 nuts from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), locally known as koko selan during the years 1906-1911. Studies conducted in 1935 found that these imported varieties were inferior to the local Talls as they required far more intensive cultural practices and were more prone to diseases.

Koko Nikobar

There was also a coconut that presumably came from the Nicobar Islands, locally known as koko Nikobar. It was a large coconut that was not easy to husk. It was not very widespread, but gave rise to a local saying: ‘son latet i parey koko Nikobar dan mouswar foulard’ which literally means that your head looks like a Nikobar coconut in a scarf, an insult to someone who has a big head!

Koko Rouz

In 1931, Dwarf coconuts were introduced from the Malay States, particularly the Malayan Yellow and Malayan Red Dwarfs, locally known as koko rouz. Fruits of these varieties are mostly used for decorative purposes and consumed locally or sold to locals as well as tourists as tender-nuts for drinking.

The Importance of Coconut in the Seychelles Economy

Coconuts are endemic to the Seychelles and grow abundantly on the coastal plateaux of all of the Seychelles islands including outlying islands.

It was as long ago as 1790, when Louis Jean-Baptiste Philogene de Malavois (1748-1827) was the commandant, that the commercial importance of coconuts began to be exploited. Small quantities of oil were made for local consumption. With the abolition of slavery in 1835 and without slaves the labour intensive sugar industry, which was until then the main export from the Seychelles, could not be sustained, for the former slaves were not prepared to continue heavy labour for low wages. The plantations owners consequently switched to the less labour intensive farming of coconuts; these became the islands dominant crop and source of export earnings from the 1840s onwards and by the 1860s coconut oil was virtually the only export.

In 1840, 300,000 litres of coconut oil were exported to Mauritius. In 1876, 722,580 coconuts were exported. In 1880, 18,993 hectoliters of coconut oil were exported. By then, the landowners, who were mostly descendants of the French Settlers, had established vast coconut estates on their properties.

These were to become the economic mainstay of the colony for almost a century. Between 1911 and 1914, the number of coconuts harvested reached over 105 million nuts. The harvest for the year 1919 alone was 36,423,072 nuts. Between 1894 and 1904, 141,355 hectoliters of oil were exported. In 1902, the first export of 5,390 kilos of coprah fetched Rs 827. In 1904, 267,200 kilos brought Rs 43,744. There was such an insatiable demand for copra on the European market that up to the late 1960’s copra production in the colony of Seychelles injected millions of rupees into the economy. Between 1915 and 1919, a little over 85 million nuts were converted into copra for export market.

Almost overnight, copra had become the gold of the Indian Ocean!

The figures are fascinating –

1920-1922 – 8,128 tons exported
1927-1932 – 30,833 tons exported
1944-1948 – 29,537 tons exported ( SCR. 9,943,920.00)
1949-1952 – 25,584 tons exported ( SCR. 21,965,863.00)
1958-1962 – 25,923 tons exported ( SCR. 34,370,769.00)
1966-1970 – 21,048 tons exported ( SCR. 27,597,000.00)

Source: The Agricultural History of Seychelles

During the first half of the 20th century, hundreds of inhabitants earned their livelihoods from the coconut industry. By then, almost 25,000 acres of land throughout the colony was under coconut cultivation.

By 1940, there were a total of 275 coconut oil mills and 50 copra kilns or calorifers. There were approximately 2 million coconut palms. Copra was exported to Mauritius, South Africa, France and United Kingdom.

The export of copra was the mainstay of the Seychelles economy before the tourism boom in the early 1970s. As a result of high cost of production and stiff competition from other coconut oil producing countries – mainly from the Asian continent, the production and export of copra took a negative turn culminating in 1994, when Pakistan, which was the last remaining importer of coconut and copra from Seychelles at that time, ceased coconut-related transactions with the country.

This spelled doom for most coconut farmers and growers in Seychelles who depended solely on the crop and did not have alternative sources of income. Coconut plantations disappeared from the main islands and coconuts grew wild on most outlying islands.

There is currently a slight resurgence in the demand for coconut oil and the export is mainly towards Kenya.