Palm oil politics
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 29 March 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An EU ban on the vegetable oil's use in biofuel has upset Indonesia and Malaysia. Meanwhile critics say it will only worsen the problem of tropical deforestation by palm oil farmers.
Manuela Saragosa looks at this most divisive of commodities, and moves to ban it impact the smallholder farmers behind almost half of global production. Sustainability researcher Gernot Klepper of the Kiel Institute explains why he thinks the European position is irrational, while Indonesian palm trade journalist Bhimanto Suwastoyo says palm growers could simply switch to markets in India and China where buyers care much less about deforestation.
Meanwhile Greenpeace's Grant Rosoman explains why the environmentalist group is so sceptical about existing certification schemes, while Tiur Rumondang of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil - the biggest such scheme - defends their work.
Producers: Laurence Knight, Joshua Thorpe
(Picture: A farmer carries palm oil fruit at a plantation in Malaysia; Credit: STR/AFP/GettyImages)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. I'm Manuel Zaragoza. Coming up, palm oil. It's in absolutely everything, from food to biofuel to cosmetics. It's almost impossible to avoid. |
| 0:16.1 | Vegan cheese, chocolate bars, margarine, ready-made pies, packaged bread, cookies, crisps, cakes, cheesecake. |
| 0:23.0 | But vast tracks of tropical rainforests have been chopped down to grow palm oil, |
| 0:28.3 | worsening climate change and putting at risk the future of endangered species like the orangutang. |
| 0:34.0 | The European Union now wants to clamp down on some palm oil imports. |
| 0:38.6 | So why do critics warn that could make things even worse? |
| 0:42.4 | Alternatives are worse. |
| 0:43.5 | In terms of production, hectares needed to produce wanton, |
| 0:47.9 | palm oil is much more efficient as a commodity. |
| 0:50.8 | Palm oil politics coming up here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:00.2 | Hello, Asalamuoleikum, |
| 1:04.7 | her name I, Sri Rahayu. |
| 1:08.3 | Ibu Ayu there is a housewife and a farmer on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. |
| 1:13.7 | She grows palm oil on a small plot of land. |
| 1:16.5 | It supplements her family's income. |
| 1:18.6 | She's one of Indonesia's millions upon millions of palm oil smallholders. |
| 1:26.9 | I've been here working as a farmer since 2016. |
| 1:30.4 | I joined with other farmers and the big palm oil company Musimmas. |
| 1:34.5 | They gave me a lot of guidance on how to cultivate palm oil properly. |
| 1:39.4 | That guidance earned Ibu Ayu's certification for farming sustainable palm oil. |
| 1:44.7 | They helped her increase the productivity of her small plot so she doesn't need to expand onto more land. |
| 1:50.3 | It also means she doesn't burn her land to clear it, something that causes the annual haze that engulfs the region each dry season. |
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