Palm Oil, Greenpeace, FOE: The reason behind attacks on palm oil
In a previous post, I introduced you to an article that came from an interesting source, which is the Palm Oil Truth Foundation website. This time, the article of interest discusses the real reasons behind the negative campaigns that NGOs such as GreenPeace and others have launched against palm oil. In fact, often times, the reasons stated behind why palm oil is such a "bad" oil are that it causes deforestation, can conduct to the increase of the greenhouse effect, and represents the extinction of certain species.
However, as I mentioned in my previous post, production of palm oil only accounts for 0.22% of the agricultural area and produces 30% of the world's edible oil. Such productivity cannot be the cause of massive deforestation, thus leading to other wrongful accusations, which then begs the question of the reason behind protestations against palm oil. According to the article, competition is the driving force of those campaigns against palm oil. In fact, palm oil yields on average 4-5 metric tons per hectare, which is ten times as much as the yields of competitors such as rapeseed, sunflower, or soy. Still according to the article, the European Union may be the one behind the campaigns against palm oil, because its major oil suppliers see palm oil as a terrible threat and know that direct apprehension through means such as boycotts would be unwelcome, thus the use of environmental groups.
Although the European Union may seem like they are not agreeing to the campaign against palm oil, yet another interesting article says the opposite. The article of March 21, 2011 entitled "EU not supporting NGOs against Palm Oil" states that there were claims that "the EU has been running afoul of the World Trade Organization (WTO) guidelines. Many felt that Western edible oil producers were resorting to environmental NGOs since they cannot use trade protectionist measures."
In light of these facts, I would like that instead of branding palm oil with accusations about it being unsustainable, in your free time, dear reader, try to see what palm oil really is and what kind of impacts it truly has. After all, we consume palm oil on a daily basis...
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