Palm oil is a commodity that generally evokes images of mass deforestation, human-rights violations and dying orangutans. In Indonesia and Malaysia, where some 85% of the world's palm oil is produced, more than 16 million hectares of land — rainforest, peat bogs and old rubber plantations — have been taken over by oil palm, and there is no sign of the industry slowing down.
Despite its bad reputation, oil palm is the most productive oil crop in the world. Oilseed rape (canola) currently produces only about one-sixth of the oil per hectare — soya bean only one-tenth. But oil-palm plantations still aren't getting as much as they could out of their plants.
The main problem is that genetic and epigenetic variables can cause some palms to underproduce. And because oil palms mature slowly, growers typically don't know for three to four years whether the trees they plant will turn out to be star performers or worthless wood.
That's where Orion comes in. When the leaf punches sent out around southeast Asia return, Orion technicians process the disc of greenery within and can send growers a report on the quality of their young plants. Lakey predicts that, if adopted on a large scale, the test could raise industry revenue by about US$4 billion per year. And, importantly, it could do so without expanding plantations. "We can get more oil for an equivalent area of land — this could help take the pressure off deforestation," Lakey says.
The world's most hated crop is not kale?
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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Palm oil is often associated with tropical deforestation above all else. However, this is only one side of the story, as agricultural scientists from the University of Göttingen and the IPB University Bogor (Indonesia) show in a new study.
[...] For the study, the researchers evaluated results from over 30 years of research on the environmental, economic and social consequences of oil palm cultivation in Africa, Asia and Latin America. They combined the results from the international literature with their own data from Indonesia, which they have been collecting since 2012 as part of an interdisciplinary German-Indonesian Collaborative Research Centre (CRC 990). Indonesia is the largest palm oil producer and exporter in the world. A large proportion of the palm oil produced in Indonesia is exported to Europe and the U.S., where it is used by the food, fuel and cosmetics industries.
The research data show that the expansion of oil palm in some regions of the world—especially Indonesia and Malaysia—contributes significantly to tropical deforestation and the loss of biodiversity. Clearing forestland also leads to substantial carbon emissions and other environmental problems. "However, banning palm oil production and trade would not be a sustainable solution," says Professor Matin Qaim, agricultural economist at the University of Göttingen and first author of the study. "The reason is that oil palm produces three times more oil per hectare than soybean, rapeseed, or sunflower. This means that if palm oil was replaced with alternative vegetable oils, much more land would be needed for cultivation, with additional loss of forests and other natural habitats."
Banning palm oil would also have negative economic and social consequences in the producing countries. "It is often assumed that oil palm is only grown on large industrial plantations," says Qaim. "In reality, however, around half of the world's palm oil is produced by smallholder farmers. Our data show that oil palm cultivation increases profits and incomes in the small farm sector, in addition to raising wages and creating additional employment for rural laborers. Although there are incidences of conflicts over land, overall the oil palm boom has significantly reduced rural poverty in Indonesia and other producing countries."
Journal Reference:
Matin Qaim, et al. Environmental, Economic, and Social Consequences of the Oil Palm Boom [open], (DOI: 10.1146/annurev-resource-110119-024922)
Previously:
(2018-12-18) Indonesia: A Country That Became "Crazy Rich"
(2018-12-01) Palm Oil was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead it Unleashed a Catastrophe.
(2017-03-15) A Makeover for the World's Most Hated Crop
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Thursday March 16 2017, @02:18PM (11 children)
It's non-GMO, gluten-free, low-fat, hold the onions, organic kale washed in pure organic children's tears instead of filthy city water.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday March 16 2017, @02:37PM (6 children)
You forgot artisan.
Eat your greens! Unless they're greens we don't want you to eat! Eat your soy beans but run to the fucking hills and scream the end of civilization as we know it at tofu and Garden Burgers™! Kale is the fucking end of civilization! Eat your flavorless iceberg shit lettuce!
“Organic” (as opposed to what? silicon-based?) is the worst marketing-inspired term I've ever heard (short of “cloud” but I digress). Yeah, organic kale costs just a smidgen more, sometimes. Organic lettuces and cabbage just another smidgen more, sometimes. But if I'm going to make a fucking salad, why the fuck wouldn't I want some fucking greens that have some fucking flavor?
Organic apples and pears? About the same price. My recent head-scratcher is organic berries being way more expensive, but hey.
Want amazing french fries? Buy some organic fucking potatoes, again about the same price.
Rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, generic vegetable oil, peanut oil, etc, etc. All have different smoke points. Have a large table of numbers [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:04PM (4 children)
> “Organic” (as opposed to what? silicon-based?) is the worst marketing-inspired term...
I'm sure that you feel this way, along with many others.
It's a shame that what started before WWII in England and shortly after in USA as the organic farming movement has now been (mostly) co-opted by big agribusiness. The farmers and others that started the movement and use of the word "organic" were very much against using DDT and other chemicals on their land, sticking to traditional fertilizers and methods of weed control. This capsule timeline puts things in historical perspective,
http://theorganicsinstitute.com/organic/history-of-the-organic-movement/ [theorganicsinstitute.com]
First two paragraphs:
The organic movement is more of a renaissance than a revolution. Until the 1920’s, all agriculture was generally organic. Farmers used natural means to feed the soil and to control pests.
It was not until the Second World War that farming methods changed dramatically. It was when research on chemicals designed as nerve gas showed they were also capable of killing insects.
A good family friend was a farmer in the Finger Lakes area of NY (previously a lawyer who wanted out of the city). He was an early member of a group of organic farmers in NY and PA in the 1950s (when I was a kid) and this capsule history matches my memory of talking with him.
Latest news on chemical agriculture is new information just uncovered about the safety of Roundup, it's alleged that research was suppressed:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/business/monsanto-roundup-safety-lawsuit.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @06:43PM
Roundup is not purely glyphosate. Roundup's "inert" ingredients aren't all inert:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weed-whacking-herbicide-p/ [scientificamerican.com]
One specific inert ingredient, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, was more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than the herbicide itself – a finding the researchers call “astonishing.”
So be suspicious of those who keep claiming glyphosate is safe and cite animal tests etc. Even if glyphosate is safe according to animal tests it doesn't mean Roundup is.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @12:21AM
Which is why I really hate that they call agrichemical-based farming "conventional." What we call organic farming should be called conventional since it was the way to farm for >99% of the history of farming and what we call conventional should be called something else.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by butthurt on Friday March 17 2017, @12:38AM (1 child)
It's a shame that what started before WWII in England and shortly after in USA as the organic farming movement has now been (mostly) co-opted by big agribusiness.
No matter how big they are, they must still refrain from the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilisers, and from genetic engineering in producing the food they call "organic," must they not? If such companies are to exist, it's for the better IMO that they have such food among their offerings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @02:13AM
Rules vary by state and country. In some places "organic" has specific meanings, other places it could be almost anything. Even in places where the rules are strict, I have no idea how good the enforcement is. If an organic crop is all of a sudden hit by some disease or bugs, the temptation for some farmers may be to spray...
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:08PM
I'm heartened by the increasing availability and falling prices of organic produce, though the cynic in me suspects it's largely due to dilution of the original meaning, which has been under attack by industrial agriculture since pretty much the moment it was coined.
As for berries - it seems to me that many, especially things like strawberries, spoil very rapidly without chemical stabilizers, and given the plants often brief lifespans, might be particularly receptive to chemically induced "yield enhancement" such as is routinely done with wheat (poisoning the plant shortly before harvest to promote "last gasp" seed production). So I'm not terribly surprised that organic is more expensive - potentially lower yields, have to get them processed and onto store shelves faster, etc. Though I recall a new organic produce stabilizer was developed recently, something with liquefied orange-peel extract I think, that greatly outperforms even the usual surface poisons used on industrial produce. That might change things dramatically, if it can be produced at a competitive price.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:12PM (3 children)
More hated than kale: rutabaga. Seriously, who eats it on anything close to a regular basis? You can't even find it in many grocery stores.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:24PM
Sounds like a model of car from the 1950's.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:35PM
How often is regular? I tend to make a dish (swe "rotmos") on it a couple of times each year. Over here you find the rutabaga in most larger grocery-stores.
Then again - I guess there is a reason it is called "swede"
(Also that is the only way to make boiled carrots edible)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday March 17 2017, @01:21AM
Koreans eat a lot of rutabagas.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @02:36PM (3 children)
Isn't the most hated crop spinach?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by lx on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:14PM (2 children)
Spinach is great.
However the fools who cremate it before serving deserve a fate worse than death.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:14PM
People burn it to ashes before serving?
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:31PM
Or drown it in hot water.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @02:37PM (9 children)
Most of us outside tropical regions wouldn't even know of palm oil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:55PM (2 children)
I've never seen it in any recipes or mentioned in restaurants. I think I saw a few bottles of it in the grocery store but I pretty much only use olive oil now for cooking anyway and occasionally peanut oil for anything requiring temperatures too high for olive oil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:42PM (1 child)
Every restaurant uses Palm Oil. Or more precisely partially-hydrated palm oil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:48PM
*partially-hydrogenated palm kernel oil
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:11PM (5 children)
I suppose that's true of anyone who never reads the ingredient list on their food, or cooks everything from raw ingredients. Palm oil is used extensively in processed foods.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:23PM (4 children)
Even if you read the label it can be difficult to spot since they're allowed to call it 'glycerin,' 'stearic acid,' or even just 'vegetable oil.'
Products with palm oil [schusterinstituteinvestigations.org]
A few examples:
Oreos, Cheez-Its, Coffee-Mate, Nutella...
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:51PM (1 child)
If that's true, then someone needs to call out both them and whoever is allowing it on charges of fraud, because both glycerine and stearic acid have definite meanings, and palm oil is neither.
If instead though they're producing stearic acid and/or glycerine from palm oil (both are synthesized from oils), then things are a lot murkier... to the point where I'd probably have to come down on their side. There's a whole lot of synthetic chemistry incorporated into processed foods, and having to list the all the feedstock from which it was created would make the ingredients list far, far longer, with dubious benefit. If you're using stearic acid in your recipe then, assuming adequate purification, it doesn't really make any nutritional difference whether it started out as palm oil, pig fat, or petroleum, the only difference is in the nature of the remaining impurities. (not sure it can actually be made from petroleum but, if so, then the stearic acid molecule produced would be indistinguishable from those produced from any other source. Well, except for carbon isotope ratios at least...)
There's much to be said for sourcing labels, but thy have essentially nothing to do with *nutrition*, which is the focus of existing labeling laws.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 16 2017, @07:22PM
You're right, it's more like the 2nd option. "Allowed to call it" was bad phrasing on my part.
(Score: 2) by jmoschner on Thursday March 16 2017, @10:12PM (1 child)
Cheyenne Mountain Zoo has an app that lets you scan the barcode of a product and it will tell you if the product contains responsibly sourced palm oil. It isn't perfect but is a good start.
Sustainable Palm Oil Shopping
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sustainable-palm-oil-shopping/id671945416?mt=8 [apple.com]
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.venturedna.palmoil&hl=en [google.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 18 2017, @07:59AM
Holding a bottle of water against this device: "This product does not contain responsibly sourced palm oil". ;-)
I really hope they instead tell you whether the product does contain palm oil that was not responsibly sourced.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 16 2017, @02:44PM (1 child)
Read it first as "most hated cop" and took "makeover" literally.
"I wonder who the most hated cop is? Wait..."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 5, Funny) by bob_super on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:36PM
> I wonder who the most hated cop is?
Had the same misread, and found the answer:
Alastair Johannes Phillers Jr, a big-city police officer.
Most women declare they absolutely hate the cop A. Phillers.
(Score: 1) by Tyrsal on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:08PM (10 children)
"evokes images of mass deforistations, human rights violations etc..." It.. does?
(Score: 4, Touché) by lx on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:17PM (5 children)
It should.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:16PM (4 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday March 16 2017, @06:02PM (3 children)
Your second link explicitly states that it's the much higher concentration of omega-6 fatty acids that are the big problem with excessive vegetable oil consumption. And from what I can find palm oil is actually extremely low in omega-6, approximately the same as butter or lard.
So, if that's the entirety of your argument, you should be overjoyed at any increase of palm oil to displace other vegetable oils.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Thursday March 16 2017, @06:27PM (2 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday March 16 2017, @08:18PM (1 child)
Sure, but there's nothing special about vegetable oils in that regard - *all* fats are bad in the quantities being commonly pushed into the food chain, butter and lard would be only somewhat better. The link specifically calls out the health risks of vegetable oils, so I point out that palm oil does not appear to share in those risks, at first glance being no worse than animal fats.
For that matter sugars and other refined carbohydrates aren't exactly doing us any favors in the quantities commonly used. Neither are meats - beef is especially unhealthy in American-diet sized quantities, but meat in general isn't particularly healthy in large quantities, unless maybe you're descended primarily from arid plains/tundra cultures that spent thousands of years without substantial access to any other food source. The modern diet is woefully short on nutritious fruits and vegetables, which available evidence suggests should be the primary food source for primates such as ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @01:33AM
How much does the fruit and vegetable lobby pay you to shill for them?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Dunbal on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:27PM (3 children)
Cos I swear to you if I didn't cut down the forest to plant palm trees for oil, I wouldn't have cut down the forest for cattle, sugar cane, coffee, (insert crop here)... Blame palm oil.
Anyway I planted a forest. And just to prove that you can NEVER please eco - types, apparently I'm a bad person because the 600+ hectares of teak I planted are a "monoculture". So it doesn't fucking count.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @06:42PM (2 children)
if you were doing it to restore the land back to nature it is kind of funny that you planted all the same species.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Thursday March 16 2017, @09:29PM (1 child)
Who the fuck would invest money to "restore land back to nature"? I did it so my grand-children can make money. Now, argue that the piece of land which was deforested, abandoned scrubland and pasture when I bought it is worse off than it was now that it's covered with forest canopy and protected from erosion by deep and extensive roots. But hang on, before you do that - in what way exactly have YOU made an impact on the environment? And don't talk to me about recycling your plastic bottles because I do that too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @01:12AM
Who the fuck would invest money to "restore land back to nature"?
Someone trying to attract eco-tourists, perhaps? Anyway, you get a silver star for planting trees. Thank you.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:38PM (7 children)
Not only tobacco is useless, it has horrible crop water productivity ratings: http://www.afedonline.org/water%20efficiency%20manual/PDF/6chapter%205_Agriculture.pdf [afedonline.org]
As for oil palm, it's debatable (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231922452_THE_water_relations_and_irrigation_requirements_of_oil_palm_Elaeis_guineensis_A_review) but I doubt it's significantly worse off then date palms that are traditionally grown in the Arab peninsula and the ME under some stringent water supplies.
compiling...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Sulla on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:00PM (6 children)
I regularly use tobacco as a way to remove aphids and wasps from my garden. A few strong tobacco plants pull the aphids of of the rest of the garden to attack it, they of course die from the nicotine. Then the wasps eat the dead aphids and die. I love seeing a ring of dead yellow jackets and wasps around the tobacco plants.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:20PM (2 children)
Almost any other member of the Solanaceae family will be a better choice for mixed crops.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by rondon on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:10PM (1 child)
So potatoes, chili peppers, or tomatoes would work?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @06:10PM
OP likely means they're all poor alternatives to just spraying some nicotine but at least you get to eat the stuff that isn't tobacco.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:48PM (2 children)
Seems like a very good use. But I wonder if there are any over-reaching regulations against growing few of these plants.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday March 16 2017, @06:04PM (1 child)
I'd be more concerned about tobacco hornworms getting to my tomatoes :(
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Thursday March 16 2017, @06:50PM
So far have not had an issue with that, which I am kind of sad about because I love big caterpillers.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:35PM (2 children)
The most hated crop in the world has to be rocks. Many farmers claim that nothing grows well on their land, except rocks. Arkansas land is better than some farmland on this earth. It grows rocks, ticks, and rattlesnakes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:47PM (1 child)
rain, water gets under rocks, freeze -- expansion of the ice moves rocks toward the surface
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 16 2017, @07:33PM
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Thursday March 16 2017, @07:20PM