What is palm oil? Why is palm oil important? Social and environmental impact of palm oil. Sustainable palm oil. About palm oil downloads. About GreenPalm. What is GreenPalm? Why GreenPalm makes a difference.
How does GreenPalm work? About GreenPalm downloads. Palm oil videos. The Market. Market overview. It is a very versatile oil and has different properties and functions for use in a variety of products from soaps to chocolate. It can be a liquid or a solid which gives it an advantage over other oils. Its smooth and creamy texture and absence of smell make it a desirable ingredient in many recipes, including baked goods such as biscuits , and it can be semi-solid at room temperature which is a property needed to keep butter and margarine spreadable.
It has a natural preservative effect which extends the shelf life of food products. A boycott of palm oil is often spoken of as a solution to this conservation challenge. Palm oil is incredibly efficient, and is the highest-yielding vegetable oil crop. Oil palm produces up to nine times more oil per unit area than other major oil crops 1 , so a switch to another type of edible vegetable oil such as rapeseed oil would require up to nine times as much land to produce the same yield.
This will increase deforestation and other impacts. A blanket boycott of palm oil could drive the price of palm oil down. This could increase demand, especially in markets which have less interest in sustainability and are bigger markets than the UK and Europe. This reduces the incentive to produce environmentally sustainable palm oil. In producing countries, millions of people work in the palm oil sector. Palm oil plays an important role in the reduction of poverty in these areas.
In Indonesia, over 4. Stopping the production of palm oil altogether would create significant problems for these people who support their families by working in this industry. What exactly is sustainable palm oil?
There are various definitions of sustainable palm oil. Malaysia and Indonesia have mandatory standards in-country, but the most widely recognised scheme is the one regulated by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil RSPO , a voluntary scheme. Palm oil produced according to these standards as of , is required to be deforestation-free. Apart from Indonesia and Malaysia there is an increase in palm oil production in other parts of the world including South and Central America, Thailand and Western Africa.
The oil palm is an extremely efficient crop, which makes the oil widely available and relatively cheap. Palm oil and palm kernel oil together represent 40 per cent of the global vegetable oil production. Palm oil has the highest yield compared to other oil crops per hectare of land. One hectare of oil palm trees produce on average 3. Oil palm accounts for 7. About 73 million tons of palm oil is produced annually. To obtain the same amount of alternative oils, such as soybean or coconut oil, between four and 10 times more land would be required, according to the World Wildlife Fund WWF.
Palm oil is widely used by food and non-food manufacturers because of its functional benefits, versatility and widespread availability. Palm oil has diverse functional properties. It provides a semi-solid consistency and long-term stability.
It also performs well at high cooking temperatures. Its smooth and creamy texture and absence of smell make it a perfect and affordable ingredient in many recipes, supporting flavour and texture. Palm oil can be used both as a crude oil as well as in the refined form. In its crude form, palm oil has a rich orange color, since it is pressed from the orange pulp of the fruit of the oil palm tree.
Only one quarter of the palm oil and palm kernel oil worldwide is used as a crude oil.
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