Palm oil. What is the problem?
Oil palm crops displace virgin rainforest. One of the most important areas of biodiversity is being replaced by a single crop. One that provides us with a cheap oil. Around half of supermarket products contain it in some form. Bread, pastries, sweets, chocolate, soaps, detergents, shampoo, cosmetics, ready meals and even forecourt Diesel!
As the rainforests are cleared for our desire for cheap products, species are disappearing for ever. The natural world is crying in pain. Even our fellow humans are suffering. The pressure our economic system imposes on indigenous lands disrespects our brothers and sisters who have made the tropical rainforests their home for thousands of years. Their homes are cut down for fractions of a pence on a supermarket product. Many are displaced to become the new urban poor. Laudato Si’ 146 notes that “pressure is being put on them to abandon their homelands to make room for agricultural or mining projects which are undertaken without regard for the degradation of nature and culture”. Indigenous communities safeguard 80% of the remaining biodiversity in the world (see the COP28 Indigenous Peoples Dialogue for example).
An argument in defence of palm oil is that it is a more efficient use of land than other oil crops such as sunflowers and rapeseed oil. This could be a good argument if palm plantations were replacing fields of sunflowers. But they are not. And what does efficiency mean if a tropical rainforest is lost? Is it not efficient for the planet’s health to have tropical rainforests and all the biodiversity they support? It is not efficient for our atmosphere to have tropical rainforests and their gift of oxygen to the rest of creation? Our appetite for vegetable oils has grown much faster than our population has grown. Perhaps some of the growth is from more people being able to purchase more items containing oils and oil-derived ingredients? Could some of the growth be as a result of using more oil and in particular palm oil in products than before? The statistics are stark: vegetable oil production over the period 2000 to 2019 increased by +125% when population growth was +26%. But palm oil has increased by over three times in this same period. Even the production of the next largest oil crops of soya bean oil (also implicated in deforestation, +134%), rapeseed oil (+84%) and sunflower-seed oil (+105%) have increased in the same period by more than population growth. Whichever way we look at it we can see we are simply using much more oil per person than we previously did. And much more than we probably should.
Deforestation of the Tropical Rainforests
What are the principal pressures that lead to deforestation?
- Beef
- Soya
- Palm Oil
- Wood and wood products (including paper)
Read more here
What fraction of the cost saving that a cheaper palm oil gives to a product is passed to the consumer and how much is retained to improve profit margins?
To what extent is palm oil really used in minimum quantities as an oil or fat (to replace more expensive oils)? Could it be being used preferentially instead of other ingredients such as flour to bulk out and achieve target product weight at a cheaper cost?
How can we value the land and the contribution of indigenous communities so that we support them as guardians of biodiversity?
Land Use Change and Climate Change
Land Use Change represents a large carbon dioxide release contributing to global warming and climate change. An area of pristine rainforest is an important carbon sink: an area that absorbs much more carbon dioxide than it releases through the years. Photosynthesis from the plants takes carbon dioxide from the air and turns it into food to power the biodiverse forest ecosystem. This provides energy for life and simultaneously a carbon-rich layer is deposited on the forest floor. Ultimately these carbon-rich layers trap carbon into the earth with parallels to how coal was formed many millions of years ago. The net effect is a net removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Exactly what we need right now! When this land is cleared for farming the essential carbon sink is abruptly stopped and the carbon contained in the forest and in a substantial part of the carbon-rich forest floor are released – flipping it from a carbon sink to a massive source of greenhouse gases. Studies have shown how the released emissions may be enormous. The effect of Land Use Change must be included in calculations of greenhouse gas emissions today.
Ingredients to look out for: palm fat, palm oil, palm kernel oil, palm kernel, palm fruit oil, vegetable oil, something palmitate, and so on. The WWF have a handy ingredients guide here.
Consider these 3 actions:
- Choose products that do not contain palm oil
- Choose sustainable palm oil if palm oil cannot be avoided (often labelled sustainable palm, RSPO [Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil], or fair palm)
- Write to the producer of your favourite products that contain palm oil and ask them to stop using it or to use sustainably certified palm oil instead.
If you feel motivated to write and need inspiration then have a look at our letter writing resource.
Statistical data sources used in this article are from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). A useful fact sheet on agricultural production statistics for the period 2000–2020 is the FAOSTAT Analytical Brief Series No. 41. To access the FAO full database see https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
Living Laudato Si' 