Is a Coconut Car Coming Your Way?

Jan. 21, 2009— -- One day soon the car you buy may be made partly out of coconuts, with a poor farmer thousands of miles away reaping great benefit.

If a plan developed by engineering students and their professor at Baylor University lives up to expectations, that farmer will triple his annual income of about $500.

It all started a few years ago when engineering professor Walter Bradley set out on a very specific search.

"I wanted to find an abundant, renewable resource that is grown exclusively in countries where the vast majority of people are poor and try to figure out if we can make that abundant resource have a much better market value," Bradley said.

That search eventually led him to the Philippines and, of course, to the coconut.

The coconut palm is ubiquitous throughout the tropical belt that runs around Earth's equator, and while many uses have been found for the nut the tree produces, as well as the husks that encase the nut's hard shell, they are of such meager commercial value these days that a typical coconut farmer in the Philippines, the world leader in coconut production, earns only about a dime for every coconut.

This is a particularly difficult time for coconut farmers because the market for coconut oil, once used extensively in such things as candies and popcorn, all but disappeared a few years ago amid fears that the high level of saturated fat in the oil is harmful to consumers.

More recent research out of Harvard and UC Berkeley, as well as other institutions, partly disputes that, suggesting that the saturated fat in tropical oils behaves much the same as vegetable oils when consumed by humans. Some research suggests it may actually be better, slightly increasing metabolism and HDL, the good cholesterol.

But the debate rages on, and the biggest loser is the coconut farmer.

"These people have really had a difficult time," Bradley said. "These farmers are dying on the vine around the world."

He hopes to see a very different future for those farmers, as well as the residents of numerous impoverished villages. He wants to see the value of coconuts increase, and he wants more of the processing done in villages, thus providing more jobs. And he wants to use every bit of the coconut, especially the husks that are now mainly treated as waste, which may in fact turn out to be the most valuable part.