Symposium on Sustainable Resource Development
May 18, 2006
Institute of Directors, London

Feeding the World Sustainably with Palm Oil
by Dr Hereward Corley
Plantation Crops Consultant

The World population is forecast to reach 8.9 billion by 2050, an increase of 2.8 billion from today. Can these people be fed?  Yes, by intensive agriculture (but not by subsistence agriculture).  Over the last 40 years, food supplies have risen faster than population, without much increase in cultivated area, as a result of more intensive agriculture.  The WHO recommended minimum oil/fat intake is 12 kg/year - 2.8 billion people will thus require a further 34 million tons of vegetable oil. With an average yield of 3.5 t/ha, another 10 million ha of palms can provide this. The other oil crops would need much larger areas, because of lower yields – e.g. 59 million ha of rapeseed and 88 million ha of soya.  There is considerable scope to increase yields from existing oil palm plantations, so the actual area required will probably be less than 10 million ha.

Environmental damage - Palm oil has been associated with wanton rain forest destruction; it has been described as the “key driver of rainforest destruction”, but the facts do not support this. The rate of forest loss is currently estimated at 14 million ha per year. The total world area of oil palms is 10 million ha, currently expanding at 0.5 Mha/year. So oil palm expansion amounts to less than 4% of forest loss. Oil palms are blamed for massive forest loss in Borneo, but palms cover only 5% of the island. Oil palms do replace forest, but these figures show they are not a major factor - shifting cultivation and controlled logging are much more important causes of damage to tropical forest.

 Poverty alleviation - An oil palm grower can make a good living from less than a quarter of the land required for shifting cultivation. In Sumatra, oil palm smallholders had net income 7 times that of subsistence farmers. In Kalimantan, the NPV of oil palm plots was 5 times that of traditional rattan gardens. With careful planning of land use, intensive management of areas under oil palm could allow other land to remain under natural vegetation.  

Infrastructure - plantations typically provide housing, medical services, education, etc.  In remote areas these facilities are usually also made available to non-employees in local communities.

In conclusion, palm oil can play a major part in meeting world vegetable oil needs.    The crop can also play an important role in poverty alleviation in the tropics.  High yields mean that the crop can provide a grower with a good living, while being less environmentally damaging than alternative crops.