Is the palm oil the wonder plant it is made out to be?

If there’s one palm that stands head and shoulders above all others in terms of its usefulness to us, it has got to be the oil-palm. This tree, which may soar to over 20 m in height, has two species: one native to West and North-west Africa, and the other to tropical Central and South America. The African variety has taken to life in South-East Asia – especially in Indonesia and Malaysia and we are now offering it large tracts of suitable tropical habitat too. There’s no environmental altruism involved; there’s just one word: oil.

The oil extracted from both the fruit and kernel of the oil palm (its yield is much higher than that of the other palms) is like manna from heaven. Not necessarily for our health, but for miscellaneous purposes. It’s been used by us for 5,000 years, and during the Industrial Revolution, the British used it to lubricate heavy machinery. More than that, because it contains more saturated fats than other vegetable oils, such as sunflower, canola, corn and soya, it makes the perfect cooking medium for deep frying and is not susceptible to oxidation.

It contains no trans-fat. It’s great for baking and making pastry dough. Apart from being used as a cooking medium, found in virtually every kitchen, it has been gleefully pounced upon by the manufacturers of commercial foods from chips to cheese puffs. It is stable as any well-governed democracy ought to be and maintains quality, flavour and consistency – so well beloved of commercial food manufacturers. So much so, that it is estimated that each person on earth, consumed 7.7 kg of the stuff in the year 2015 and its demand is rising fast. In 2018-2019, world production of palm oil was 73.5 million metric tons.

All of this did not, of course, go down our gullets in some form or the other – we put it to other uses too. Look closely at the labels of your shampoo, shaving cream, body lotions or detergents. Invariably ingredients derived from palm oil will be among them it – its name perhaps disguised (we shall see why…). Unilever’s ‘Sunlight’ soap has it, and well then there’s the tell-tale American firm ‘Palmolive’ which gives the game away! It’s thought that 70 per cent of such products have palm oil in one form or the other, and if it is a foaming product, then you can be pretty certain that it contains palm oil. It has been claimed that 50 per cent of all the products used by urban Indians have palm oil in them, in one form or the other.

The other big use of palm oil is in the production of bio-diesel. Ah, you might say, at last a renewable source of fuel for our motor-vehicles and heavy machinery. Indonesia, in fact, aims to shift to 100 per cent palm-oil bio-diesel from conventional diesel and will need 15 million hectares of plantations to do so. The biggest bio-diesel plant in the world is the Finnish Neste oil bio-diesel plant based in Singapore, with a capacity of 800,000 tons per year. Half of all of Europe’s palm oil imports from Indonesia went into the production of bio-diesel. In India, we import large amounts of palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia and when the Ukrainian crisis erupted, the prices sky- rocketed. We’re now aiming to be ‘atmanirbhar’ in the production of palm-oil!

So, all in all, the oil palm seems to be one of Mother Nature’s magnanimous gifts to us, doesn’t it? Not so fast…

There are major issues with the use – and abuse – of palm oil. Apart from the fact that all doctors will tell you that deep-fried food and snacks such as chips are bad for you, there are other serious problems. Palm-oil bio-diesel produces thrice the amount of carbon emissions as does conventional diesel and may thus contribute to an increase in greenhouse gases and global warming. But there is something more insidious and frightening about this wonder tree.

When I first saw aerial photographs of palm oil plantations I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Normally, when you see an endless green canopy below you, your heart lifts. But these trees stood in endless rows like somewhat menacing storm-troopers stiff and silent, the areas around them clear-felled and lifeless. More conquests had been planned for them. And the vanquished —  hundreds of thousands of hectares of species-rich rain-forest in South-East Asia (Indonesia and Malaysia) – ruthlessly bulldozed, changing entire ecosystems and upending the lives of locals. The critically endangered Sumatran orangutan, tiger and rhino will soon have nowhere to run or hide as forests fall all around them. Locals, especially tribals, have had their lives turned upside down as palm-oil companies have bulldozed their forests, forcing many to relocate. Some have gotten jobs, but there has been wholesale exploitation here too, aided and abetted by governments that would rather look the other way. There are checks and balances, but not much implementation of these.

In India, we are now casting our covetous eyes at the bio-diversity rich rain-forests of the North-East and Andamans, chainsaws at the ready and Rs11,000 crores waiting to be invested, even as environmentalists scream blue murder. There are 3 lakh hectares already under water-guzzling (each tree requires over 360 litres of water per day) palm-oil plantations and the government wants to increase this to 6.5 lakh hectares in the next five years.  The recent declaration that henceforth plantations would come under green (or, god forbid, was it forest?) cover calculations makes clear the government’s intentions. As always, we seem hell-bent on turning a saviour into a sinner.

Tags: Production, Malaysia, biodiesel, palm oil, yield, соя, oil palm, corn, food, sunflower, vegetable oils, Indonesia, canola