Through its participation in the Castor Oil International Sustainability Program, Gokul Agro is working to advance sustainability in the castor oil industry as a whole. By sharing best practices and collaborating with other industry leaders, Gokul Agro is helping to create a more sustainable and responsible supply chain.

Being one of the leading producers of Castor oil & its derivatives, Gokul Agro have always been part of the initiatives taken for a sustainable growth of castor seeds as an important raw material. Gokul Agro is now a proud member of International sustainable castor association and is active in creating awareness among the farmers, stakeholders to inculcate sustainable farming practices. Prior to this Gokul Agro have been actively involved in Solvent Extractor’s Association’s model farming & yield increasing program, SEA’ s rainwater harvesting and ground water recharging to ensure that the farming community understand the importance of Sustainability and adopt to the best standards.

Gokul Agro is also one of the producer registered under RSPO ( Roundtable sustainable Palm oil )as a member.

The castor crop is grown extensively in the Gujarat and surrounding region of western India for several decades. The crop grows well in marginal, sandy soil and is drought resistant. Castor oil has no real nutritional value for humans or animals and is considered non-food1, non-feed. The farmers consider castor to be easy to grow and easy to sell, and they appreciate its long shelf life which enables easy storage and transportation. They choose it as a profitable” (low cost/benefit ratio) cash crop that complements their dairy farming and food crop cultivation. Selling castor seed is straightforward and transparent in the many hundreds of open trading yards in the region. There are no corporate monopolies.

The region is not forest rich, and most farms have existed for generations. In fact, forest lands have actually increased recently in this region?.

The huge number of smallholder farmers have a long legacy of growing castor crops and they do so by choice – they consider the crop to be somewhat of an “insurance policy” due to its robust resistance to drought and its “low input, easy to grow, easy to store, easy to sell” legacy.

There is little waste associated with castor cultivation and processing. Once crushed, the seed yields a little less than fifty percent oil, the remaining “cake” or “meal” being valued as a highly effective organic fertilizer1. The cake may also be used internally in the crushing operation as a high calorific value carbon neutral biofuel.

During its life cycle, castor crop derives all of its carbon from atmospheric CO2 (biogenic carbon), which is returned to the atmosphere only when destroyed, thus completing the “circular” cycle*. This is in stark contrast to fossil fuel based derivatives whose carbon has been sequestered in crude oil for over a million years. Using castor oil derivatives instead of their fossil fuel based alternatives, prevents the depletion of crude oil, one of our most valuable finite natural resources.

As custodians of SUCCESS TM, the world’s first sustainable castor code, SCA understands that sustainability is a never ending journey of continuous improvement. It is a journey that we hope we can take together.

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5015816/ US Library of Medicine NIH (National Institutes of Health) Refers to castor oil as a non-edible oil crop. It also describes castor cake as an efficient fertilizer.
2. SEA (Solvent Extraction Association) reports that castor farming yield has improved over the last 7 years; Directorate of Economics and Statistics reports that crop intensity has increased, but land usage has in fact decreased over the past 3 decades. Since 2016, there has been no land expansion for castor farming.
3. 2016 baseline study of 1,000 castor farmers by founding members of the Pragati initiative in 2016.
4. https://www.bio.org/sites/default/files/legacy/bioorg/docs/Position_Carbon_Footprint_PCF.pdf