The pace of deforestation on Earth is breath-taking. The loss of forests itself is intertwined with the rise of humanity — in just the last three centuries. Earth has forsaken 1.5 billion hectares. Palm oil plays a huge role in this. Between 2001 to 2015, studies finds its plantations expanded over 22.4 million hectares — a rise estimatedly of 167%.
While the statistics are shocking, this oil is primarily produced from the West African palm — traditionally, this was done by small farmers in community operations. Over the last two centuries, it became a major industrial crop, grown in vast plantations, processed in massive factories. It is pervasive in multiple consumer goods, one of the most common inputs in detergent, cosmetics, adhesives, wet wipes and processed foods, from biscuits to chips, noodles to ice cream.’
Palm oil has a particular tenacity — it makes wafers crisper and keeps ice-cream from melting. Its impacts on the planet and people are somewhat different though. ‘It’s widespread industrial expansion has tremendous consequences for both ecologies and livelihoods. In Indonesia, palm oil plant-actions have caused massive deforestation — that comes with huge ecological effects in terms of losses of biodiversity and climate change as you replace carbon dense natural forests with a single-crop plantation. Further, people in these regions lose their land, get pulled into exploitative labor regimes and exposed to toxic chemicals.’ The health impacts don’t stop there. ‘This proliferation of junk food that oil palm is part of is affecting people’s diets globally now — the worldwide obesity epidemic is driven in part by this expansion of cheap industrially produced oil inputs.’
Palm oil — the ubiquitous grease around this vast global industrial machine — is part of our modern epic.
It’s not necessary to use palm oil everywhere. We should explore alternatives which work better, according to local ecologies and farming systems. Re-localizing and supporting smaller scale production will lighten the world. And many of its citizens, currently burdened under palm-oil based foods which are anything but nourishing.
