Does Virgin Coconut Oil Need to be Organic

Posted by : Guhan
Posted Date : 18 Jan, 2019

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There is more Virgin Coconut Oil in Indian market being labelled as Organic and demanding higher price, while presence of Certified Organic Coconut farms doesn’t justify that quantity available in the market, as very very small percentage of coconut farms are Organic certified to-date in India. Leaving aside the argument of whether the products marketed as Organic are from organic plantations, let’s look at whether Coconut need to be organic. Mother nature has gifted few plants which are naturally organic ie means the fertilizers used in farming do not end in the produce as pesticide residue. One of them is Coconut.

 

Let’s see what evidences are available to say that

 

Environmental Working Group(EWG) release a list of most contaminated foods and vegetables and Coconut is not in the list, refer link https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/full-list.php

 

There was a study conducted in 2002 to find presence of pesticides in Coconut Water and there were none found https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12113343

 

According to FEDIOL(the federation representing the European Vegetable Oil and Proteinmeal Industry in Europe, there were “no residues of pesticides found in Coconut Oil”  http://www.fediol.be/data/09SAF055Rev6_RA-food-coconut_2010.pdf

 

 

Many evidences seem to suggest that the pesticides used when farming coconuts do not reach the flesh of the coconut or affect the oil in any way. As coconut tree naturally filters out the pesticides due the structure of the plant and well protected coconut. While there is no argument that the farmers should practice more organic method to safeguard the environment and for sustainable farming, it is a slow and evolving process and demands lot of education. We have been educating and supplying organic fertilizers to our farmers and do our part to move those who are not using natural fertilizers. We have partnered with an organization and has come up with a low cost Biomix, only 5kg per coconut tree per year is required and costs much cheaper than other organic manure.

 

Having said that, the focus to choose the Virgin Coconut Oil should be more on the processing that is used, rather than “Organic” labelled and priced much higher. As we said Organic Certified or practices plantations are much needed, the end produce of both organic and non-organic (no GMO) long coconut tree produce has got no difference in the end product of Virgin Coconut Oil and its nutrients.