A response from the Palm Oil Truth Foundation to the Asia Sentinel article entitled “Trouble for palm oil”

“Palm oil, the world's cheapest cooking oil and a versatile product that is used in everything from biofuels to chocolate chip cookies, has always been under fire from various quarters, first allegedly because of its adverse effect on cholesterol – since disproven – or because of concerns over tropical deforestation to plant oil palm plantations.”

Asia Sentinel
7th January 2010

This very first paragraph in your correspondent’s report (“Trouble for palm oil”: 7th January 2010) captures the essence of everything that is wrong with the mainstream media’s palm oil news coverage.

Several salient facts emerges from the paragraph:

First, palm oil is the world’s cheapest cooking oil.  Secondly, palm oil’s versatility as a consumer and industrial product is clear. Next, palm oil has always been under fire from various quarters. The first spurious allegation of adverse effect on cholesterol of a palm oil diet has since been proven to be not credible.  Finally, there are current concerns “over tropical deforestation to plant oil palm plantations.” 

Let’s deal with the current allegation of tropical deforestation caused by oil palm plantations.

Much has been made of  the BBC’s program called “The End of the Jungle” in which the reporter Angus Stickler accused the Malaysian government and the palm oil industry of "laying waste to the last remaining rainforests of Borneo in what has been described as a corporate land grab."  Stickler alleged: "It's estimated that only 3 percent of the primary rainforest of Malaysian Borneo remains.”

As we shall see, Stickler has an unique talent for embellishing the facts and putting forward half-truths and equivocations as gospel truth.

Let’s examine the facts. 

Malaysian Borneo is made up of the states of Sabah and Sarawak.  According to the FAO, “Malaysia has a total land area of 330 242 km2 (33 million ha). Peninsular Malaysia has an area of 131,573km², while Sabah and Sarawak cover 73,711km² and 124,449km² respectively.”

“Malaysia is one of the few remaining heavily forested tropical countries with 61 percent of total land area of 20.06 million ha covered with natural forest . Dipterocarp forest constitutes the bulk of Malaysia’s forest areas (89 percent), followed by peat swamp forest (7 percent), mangrove forest (3 percent), and planted forest (1 percent).”

“Of the total forest area 5.97 million ha are in Peninsular Malaysia, 4.25 million in Sabah, and 9.84 million in Sarawak (Table 1).”  In other words, Malaysian Borneo alone accounts for more than 70% of the forest cover in Malaysia.

Source: FAO

From Table 1 above, it is clear that as at 2001, the forest cover in the state of Sarawak alone stands at a whopping 79.1% whilst Sabah can boast forest cover of 57.4%.

It behooves one to ask, just how Stickler could arrive at the conclusion that “only 3 percent of the primary rainforest of Malaysian Borneo remains”!

Stickler, in discussing the issue of displacement of native land in Borneo goes on to point out that “the Kayan and other tribes are fighting in the courts. They say they have documents to prove their right to the land.” According to Stickler, “Harrison Ngau, who is heading the legal challenge,” told him: "The natives are subsistence farmers, hunters, gatherers, fishermen - a simple people".

Perhaps Mr Stickler should be apprised of the recent ruling by Malaysia’s highest court affirming the land rights of indigenous people which exposes the lie that native people are being displaced with impunity.

A panel of three Federal Court judges unanimously ruled that tribes have customary ownership of land they have lived on for generations and state governments cannot take it from them without compensation, said See Chee How, a prominent land rights lawyer.

"It is a landmark decision," said See of Tuesday's ruling. "It's the first time the Federal Court has affirmed (such) a decision."

The tribes, who mostly live in poor settlements in the jungles of Borneo, argue that the land is theirs because they have lived on it for generations. In 2007 the Federal Court ruled that a family of the Kedayan group in Sarawak state on Borneo had rights over land they used and that they should be compensated. The government had taken over the land in the 1990s to grant it for oil exploration.

The state government sought a final review of the decision in the more-than-decade-old case, but recently another Federal Court panel upheld the ruling in favor of the family.

Last year in an unprecedented move, the Malaysian government said it would grant ownership of farming land to about 20,000 indigenous families to improve their lives.

In the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, the fact that indigenous tribes could successfully seek relief in a court of law in Malaysia disproves the wild and disingenuous allegations that they are being driven off their land without recourse!

The fact that palm oil should come under such withering fire is indeed curious.

For one, palm oil is an inherently sustainable crop with the highest productivity and thus most efficient land use factor amongst all edible oilseeds. With a yield of 4-5 metric tons per hectare, a yield that is close to ten times the yield of other oilseed crops, palm oil requires ten times less land to produce the same unit of edible oil as its nearest competitor.  Palm oil, therefore does not require quite as much land as its critics would want us to believe.

This explains why, Malaysia, which had been the world’s largest producer of palm oil for over a century still has an enviable forest cover of more than 60%, which is one of the highest forest cover prevailing in the world today, certainly far higher than the 11% forest cover prevailing in the United Kingdom, from which the BBC hails.

Further, palm oil cultivation takes up less than 1% of the total world agricultural area, with Malaysian palm oil plantations occupying less than 0.5% of it. How can it then be credible to claim that palm oil is causing “massive deforestation” and is responsible for 20% of global carbon emission?

In the light of these concerted attacks against a crop that occupies just 1% of the world agricultural area, it is certainly unconscionable for the BBC to conveniently remain silent on the environmental impact of the other 99% cultivated land in the rest of the world – unless the BBC is asserting that there is no environmental impact made by the other oilseed crops.  The Palm Oil Truth Foundation is compelled to ask whether this is due to the fact that most of these 99% agricultural land reside in the developed economies from which these critics hail?

If conservation is truly a concern, the BBC and green NGOs should propose that palm oil be cultivated in place of the other oilseed crops such as soy, corn, sunflower and rapeseed (weather permitting) in view of its superior efficient land use! 

It is obvious that if palm oil cultivation is curtailed or taken away altogether from the trade equation, the world would be scrambling for more oil which , in turn, would see ten times more land being opened up for other oilseed cultivation to fill the gap left by palm oil.

In those circumstances, perhaps the BBC's and green NGOs’ claims of massive deforestation may then have a modicum of credibility and become a stark reality!

In view of the foregoing, it is pertinent to examine the opening paragraph of your report “Trouble for Palm Oil” again, and ask whether your correspondent could have inadvertently fingered the real reasons for palm oil being under constant fire – is it due to the fact that palm oil is the world’s cheapest cooking oil or is it because of its versatility as a consumer and industrial product (as biofuel) or both? It is certainly food for thought! THE END.