Despite having no soil, no capital, cripplingly high freight costs and a brace of ducks he doesn't know what to do with, a micro-farmer is determined to build a viable agricultural business on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

The tiny horseshoe of 27 coral islands in the Indian Ocean, 2,700 kilometres north-west of Perth, has just 14 square kilometres of land and is home to about 600 people.

Much of the land is covered in the coconut palms that give the islands their name. For almost 150 years, the trees were harvested for copra by a local Cocos Malay workforce under the rule of the Clunies-Ross family.