The Right Information on Palm Oil

I remember boarding a flight from Milan to Rome last March. Our flight had barely been airborne for 15 minutes when the pilot announced, first in Italian and then in heavily Italian accented English that the aircraft was facing a problem that the crew was trying to analyze.

A few minutes later, he announced, that it was a vibration and that we would have to return to the airport. Then the flight attendants made a series of step by step announcements explaining what was going on and what to expect when we were on the ground.

In an event that could have been terrifying, the fears of the passengers were relieved because we were given the right information.

In many ways, the conduct of green groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth (FOE) in their constant misreporting and scaremongering on palm oil is the direct antithesis of the level headed approach of the Italian pilot and his crew in the situation enumerated above.

Considering the recent actions of Greenpeace and FOE in their irrational campaign against palm oil, in particular the pressure put on Unilever, Nestle, Kraft Foods and Cargill to stop buying palm oil from Indonesian producer Sinar Mas, one indisputable fact stands out - palm oil is planted on LESS than 1% of the world's total agricultural area and yet accounts for more than 30% of the world's edible oil output.

This fact proves that palm oil does not require quite as much land as it's critics would want the world to believe. This fact alone demolishes all the false allegations of massive deforestation and destruction of biodiversity such as the orang utan.

This fact, by and of itself, should alert the media and all right thinking observers that something does not jive with the anti-palm oil campaigns. No matter how much support these anti-palm oil campaigns receives from the main stream media, it cannot alter the fact that palm oil is the highest yielding edible oil crop with a typical yield of 4-5 metric tons per hectare, which is close to ten times the yield of its nearest competitor.

Further, what these Greenpeacers and FOE'ers appear to have left out of the equation is the millions of Indonesian farmers and Malaysian land settlers and smallholders who rely on palm oil to eke out a living.

Says The Jakarta Globe: ""About 10 million oil palm farmers in 20 Indonesian provinces have stated their readiness to boycott Nestle products. Apkasindo [Indonesian Palm Oil Growers Association] is now preparing to draw up a list of Nestle products on the market," Asmar Arsjad, Apkasindo secretary general, said over the weekend, adding that if Nestle stops buying from Sinar Mas it would hurt palm oil producers."

So, as is often the case, environmentalists have indirectly pitted themselves against workers. And given their numbers, these workers may have the upper hand when it comes to persuasion. In addition to the boycott, Apkasindo called on Indonesian and Malaysian palm oil producers to stop all exports of crude palm oil to the US and the EU if negative campaigns over their environmental practices continue.

In the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, if push comes to shove, the call by Apkasindo which is reminiscent of the oil embargo of the 1970's which almost brought western economies to the brink of meltdown is not an entirely unreasonable one, considering the patently untruthful, shady and dishonest schemes against palm oil carried out by proxies such as Greenpeace.

No amount of agitating by the merchants of untruth wearing the cloak of an environmental organization can alter the truth.

The truth bears repeating - that is, palm oil does not require quite as much land as these Greenpeacers would want the world to believe. After all, all the palm oil planted in this world occupies less than 1% of the world agricultural land. Yet palm oil accounts for more than 30% of the world's edible oil output!

With a yield of 4 to 5 metric tons per hectare, which is close to ten times the productivity of competing oil seeds, palm oil has the added advantage of a relatively amazing productive lifespan of 20-30 years. Compare this with its competitors like rapeseed, soy and sunflower which are regularly planted and rooted each year at harvest time.

The Palm Oil Truth Foundation would like to pose this question to Greenpeace: " How can you fail to notice that many more acreages are annually planted with rapeseed, soy and sunflower and rooted, planted and rooted and planted and rooted to get far less oil than palm oil is able to extract from far less acreages planted and not rooted for the next 20-30 years?"

After all, if it is the carbon loss from the destruction that these Greenpeacers are concerned about, let us do a complete computation then, for instance, over a 20 or 30 year period.

Further, we should also factor in the environment damage caused by the soil and fertilizer runoff.

Why does Greenpeace shut its eyes to the fact that for every acre of palm oil they condemn, they are indirectly supporting 16 or more acres dedicated to rapeseed, soy and sunflower as they all produce about the same amount of edible oil.

Similarly, to substitute the palm oil production that will potentially be curtailed if their anti-palm oil campaigns were they to succeed, they need an exponential factor of that number of acres of palm oil to get from their beloved soy, sunflower, rapeseed or any other edible oilseed.

Why does Greenpeace and FOE remain silent over the 33 millions tons of carbon emitted during the annual process of coal mining in the UK. Yet the cultivation of palm oil which has been hailed recently by researchers from Wageningen University in the Netherlands as "the most efficient energy crop," is systematically demonized as destructive of rainforest and contributing to global warming.

The university's finding is a rejection of environmental NGOs and the anti-palm oil lobbyists who consistently claim that palm oil is unsustainable.

Its research found that palm oil, sugar cane and sweet sorghum are currently the most sustainable energy crops. These commodities also produce "far smaller quantities of greenhouse gases than fossil fuels".

The university's analysis considered nine different energy crops against nine different sustainability criteria with palm oil coming out on top while biofuel from maize from the United States and wheat from Europe scored far lower.

The report's author, Sander de Vries, concluded that sustainable sugar canes and oil palms get the most energy per hectare and cause the least environmental damage.

Another researcher, Dr Gernot Pehnelt, founder and director of GlobEcon, an independent research and consulting institute based in Germany, released a new study that revealed the biased and prejudicial nature of the EU's Renewable Energy Directive towards foreign biofuels.

The report, entitled "European Policies Towards Palm Oil: Sorting Out Some Facts," demonstrated that the assumptions contained in the directive about the ecological impact of foreign biofuels reflected political and not scientific or economic reality.

Dr Pehnelt came to the defense of the rich biodiversity in oil palm plantations, their excellent crown cover that oil palms provide and the yield per hectare advantages of this low-energy and low-fertilizer crop.

"Sadly, many of the claims that foreign biofuels, specifically palm oil, are a threat to the environment are seriously flawed, some even completely unfounded," he said, adding that the side effects of the flawed policies could give rise to political friction and trade disputes to severe economic handicaps for developing countries.

Palm oil is popular with food manufacturers for several reasons.

First, as a function of its high productivity, it is relatively cheap. Secondly, as a vegetable oil, it is trans fat and cholesterol free. Thirdly, as a cooking oil, it is relatively tolerant of high cooking temperatures, making it a preferred edible oil for use in food manufacturing, baking and fast food chains. Finally, palm oil is naturally endowed with heart friendly vitamins such as Co-Enzyme Q10, beta-carotenes and tocotrienols ( a superior form of Vitamin E).

It is also suitable as a component of biofuel and bio-diesel and in view of its productivity and lower costs, its potential as feedstock in the production of bio-fuel and bio-diesel is enormous.

However, it is precisely for the above reasons that in recent times, palm oil has come increasingly under attack.

With the recent expose that the EU could be wittingly or unwittingly funding the Friends of the Earth's anti-palm oil campaigns through the European Commission funded DG Environment's NGO funding program, it behooves one to ask just who is funding these Greenpeace anti-palm oil initiatives?

However, palm oil does not have to put up with these covert trade barriers being erected by proxies like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth for much longer.

As things stand, China and India are fast emerging as the largest purchasers of palm oil and their consumption trends point to the fact that these two countries, together with the rest of the world (apart from the EU) will demand more palm oil than the EU and the USA combined.

When push comes to shove, a cartel can be formed and the EU when denied the world's cheapest cooking oil can then thank Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace and put up with the runaway inflation that such an action will inevitably induce. Perhaps, the time is now considering the fragile state of economic recovery of the EU member states!

What Greenpeace and FOE should realize is that their palm oil scaremongering, rather than scaring the market on palm oil is having the reverse effect - palm oil exports continue to rise. Many right thinking consumers and food manufacturers are smelling a rat and are beginning to recognize that their actions against palm oil are really covert operations carried out by Greenpeace and FOE to promote trade protectionism on behalf of the EU Commission in the guise of environmental concerns! THE END.

About the Author

Palm Oil Truth Foundation is an international non-governmental and not-for-profit organisation, without strings to the world of commerce and power. We are a people organisation, organised for the people and founded upon the principles of integrity and responsibility as a global citizen with the sole purpose of representing TRUTH to the global community about health, environmental and economic benefits of palm oil.

Author (palmoiltruthfoundation). Submitted on Mon, 16 Aug 2010 Time: 3:52 AM

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