Palm Oil and the Virtue of Gratefulness

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by: palmoiltruthfoundation
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Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2011 Time: 4:39 AM
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In our offices, our human resources team has developed what we consider to be an effective and encouraging program that centers around gratefulness.

Whenever an employee notices something good another employee does here in the office, he or she can take a special "Thank You" card provided by human resources and write a note of appreciation. It's a good feeling to walk into your office and find one of those cards on your desk.

Isn't it great to be thanked for a job well done? Doesn't a good hearty "Thank You" brighten your day? And doesn't it make your relationships a little more special - just to know that your work is not taken for granted?

Sadly, environmental organizations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth (FOE) appear to be woefully deficient in this very endearing of human qualities, especially in the way they have conducted their palm oil campaigns for the past 5 years!

After all, if conservation is their true concern palm oil should be their pet crop! A recent report by Wageningen University declared that palm oil is the most energy efficient crop.
The university's finding is a rejection of the wild claims of Greenpeace and FOE and other environmental NGOs and the anti-palm oil lobbyists that palm oil is unsustainable.

Its research found that palm oil, sugar cane and sweet sorghum are currently the most sustainable energy crops. These commodities also produce "far smaller quantities of greenhouse gases than fossil fuels".

The university's analysis considered nine different energy crops against nine different sustainability criteria with palm oil coming out on top while biofuel from maize from the United States and wheat from Europe scored far lower.

The report's author, Sander de Vries, concluded that sustainable sugar canes and oil palms get the most energy per hectare and cause the least environmental damage.

Another researcher, Dr Gernot Pehnelt, founder and director of GlobEcon, an independent research and consulting institute based in Germany, released a new study that revealed the biased and prejudicial nature of the EU's Renewable Energy Directive towards foreign biofuels.

The report, entitled "European Policies Towards Palm Oil: Sorting Out Some Facts," demonstrated that the assumptions contained in the directive about the ecological impact of foreign biofuels reflected political and not scientific or economic reality.

Dr Pehnelt came to the defense of the rich biodiversity in oil palm plantations, their excellent crown cover that oil palms provide and the yield per hectare advantages of this low-energy and low-fertilizer crop.

"Sadly, many of the claims that foreign biofuels, specifically palm oil, are a threat to the environment are seriously flawed, some even completely unfounded," he said, adding that the side effects of the flawed policies could give rise to political friction and trade disputes to severe economic handicaps for developing countries.

"This new study makes a strong case that RED discriminates against non-EU producers of biofuels, such as Asian palm oil.

"Perhaps most importantly, palm oil acts as a substantial driver of economic growth in the developing world, drastically reducing hunger and poverty in regions that actively cultivate this valuable crop.

"It's time for Europe to not only recognize the energy and environment benefits of palm oil, but also the suffering in low-income, tropical countries that palm oil critics continue to perpetuate," said Dr Pehnelt.

An examination of the facts do indeed support this contention.

For starters, the oil palm share of world agricultural land is only 0.22 per cent.

The total greenhouse gas (GHG) emission of global agriculture is 17 per cent which is considered small compared with the burning of fossil fuel, which contributes 57 per cent of GHG emission.

The carbon footprint of oil palm cultivation globally is, therefore, 0.22 per cent times 17 per cent of the total or 0.0374 per cent of global GHG emissions.

Thus, even if all palm oil cultivation takes place on converted peat-lands and rain-forest (which, by any stretch, is certainly not the case), it still occupies only 0.22% of the world's agricultural land, making it morally wrong and pure hyperbole to blame oil palm as a significant contributor to global warming.

Further, the World Resources Institute (WRI) has demonstrated recently that there is a solution - plant new palm oil on degraded land. Other than that, as WRI has taken pains to point out, close to one billion degraded hectares globally are available for forest rehab.

Finally, successful research has been carried out in Malaysia, whereby clonal oil palm materials, capable of producing 25 to 50% more fresh fruit bunch yield have already planted in the fields. As such, higher land productivity than that obtained currently, can be expected from oil palm in the future, without the necessity of further forest clearing.

Yet both groups which hail from the UK remain silent over the 33 millions tons of carbon emitted during the annual process of coal mining in the UK! One would have thought that if carbon emission is their true concern, they would be parking themselves in front of the coal mines dressed in some silly chimneysweep's outfit befitting their oft repeated orang utan attired stunts and antics!

Given the obvious predilection of green groups like Greenpeace, FOE and RAN to ignore ecological events of far greater proportions and their ominous manipulation and cherry picking of facts to get consumers and multinational food manufacturers like Unilever and Nestle to ostracize palm oil, the media should have been adequately alerted to the probability that there is more going on beneath the surface than meets the eye with these green groups.

The Palm Oil Truth Foundation is compelled to ask: "Could the lure of green lucre provided by entities that wish to rein in the incredible popularity and growth of palm oil in food and biofuel manufacturing be too lucrative to resist?" THE END.

About the Author

Palm Oil Truth Foundation is an international non-governmental and not-for-profit organisation, without strings to the world of commerce and power. We are a people organisation, organised for the people and founded upon the principles of integrity and responsibility as a global citizen with the sole purpose of representing TRUTH to the global community about health, environmental and economic benefits of palm oil.