Copra (Dutch: copra) was the dried kernel (Dutch: kiemwit) of the coconut (Dutch: cocosnoot) processed by the population of the residency of Atjeh in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and one of the principal agricultural exports of the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden after the pacification. Part of the kernel was grated, pressed, and the oil extracted to produce coconut oil (Dutch: cocosolie), the primary cooking fat of the archipelago, while the residual dried kernel was sliced, sun-dried, and exported to European factories for use in soap and margarine production. By the 1920s copra ranked alongside rubber and pinangnut as a leading Atjeh export.
Production methods
Local households grated the fresh kernel from split coconuts on a wooden grater (Dutch: klapperasem), pressed it in wooden screw-presses for oil, and dried the residual pieces — the so-called copra — in the sun on palm-leaf mats or, increasingly, on the heated floors of smoke-drying kilns (Dutch: drooginrichtingen). The smoked copra (Dutch: gerookte copra) carried a lower grade than the sun-dried variety but resisted mould in the humid Atjeh climate and was therefore preferred for long-distance export.
The drying process was critical to quality. Improperly dried copra, with a residual moisture content above seven per cent, was liable to develop the yellow-green Aspergillus flavus mould that produces aflatoxin; European margarine factories rejected such consignments and Atjeh exporters were constantly pressed by their Dutch and German buyers to improve drying discipline. The colonial agricultural service ran extension courses for smallholders in the 1910s and 1920s in the use of improved kilns (Dutch: verbeterde droogovens).
Trade and economic significance
Copra formed a substantial export commodity, linking Aceh to global markets for coconut oil, soap, and margarine. Its export volume grew alongside the expansion of rubber plantations on the East Coast, and by the 1920s the coconut districts of Pidië, Noord-Atjeh and the Tamiang lowlands supported extensive smallholder groves whose produce was gathered by Chinese and Acehnese dealers and shipped through Belawan and Sabang. The Atjehsche peper- en pinanghasil accounts of the landschapskas noted that the kokos- en coprahasil was an increasingly important revenue line in the early twentieth century, although it never reached the f 125,000 of the peperhasil recorded in 1913.
The principal overseas buyers of Atjeh copra were the soap and margarine factories of the Netherlands (notably Lever Brothers and the Nederlandsche Margarine Unie), Hamburg, and — after the rise of vegetable-oil refining in the 1920s — the United States. Copra also fed the local cocosolie trade that supplied cooking oil to every household in the archipelago and underpinned the diet of the Netherlands Indies population.
Decline and legacy
By the 1930s the global depression had driven copra prices sharply down, and the Atjeh smallholder copra economy contracted in parallel with the plantation rubber sector. The colonial government’s response was to encourage the formation of smallholder co-operatives (Dutch: volkscredietwezen) and to support the establishment of coconut-oil mills at Kuta Raja and Langsa. Copra nevertheless remained a key smallholder crop through the 1930s and into the Japanese occupation of 1942, and the coconut groves of the Atjeh coast formed the basis of the post-independence Acehnese coconut economy.
See Also
- Palm Oil (Aceh)
- Rubber Industry in Atjeh
- Pinangnut (Betel Nut)
- Black Pepper (Aceh)
- Atjehsche peper- en pinanghasil
- Belawan
- Sabang
- Koeta-Radja
- Langsa
- Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden
- 1913
- 1920
- 1930
Source
DLP-84-Atjeh.pdf, pp. 12-13.