Why sustainable palm oil?

Driven by ever increasing global demand for edible oils, the past few decades have seen rapid expansion in the production of two major edible oils, soyoil in South America and palm oil the tropics. From the 1990s to the present time, the area under palm oil cultivation had increased by about 43% , most of which were in Malaysia and Indonesia - the world's largest producers of palm oil. While better managed plantations and oil palm smallholdings serve as models of sustainable agriculture, in terms of economic performance as well as social and environmental responsibility, there is serious concern that not all palm oil is being produced sustainably at present. Development of new plantations has resulted in the conversion of large areas of forests with high conservation value and has threatened the rich biodiversity in these ecosystems. Use of fire for preparation of land for oil palm planting has been reported to contribute to the problem of forest fires in the late 1990s. The expansion of oil palm plantations have also given rise to social conflicts between the local communities and project proponents in many instances.

Source from www.rspo.org 

Today I would like to feature a site which monitor the palm oil prices in the global market. The website is independent, citing the prices from the official resources such as MPOB, MPOC and others Malaysian and Indonesian plam oil authorities.

I quote the welcome message of the site

Palm oil prices are expected to edge up as demand increase for the commodity. Despite effort using "media campaign" initiated by many environmentalist and NGO against the industry to pressure governments and people to boycott palm oil, demand and crude palm oil prices has steadily rise to record levels. Output by major supplier Malaysia and Indonesia is also expected to increase.