permaculture

[Juergen Botz <jurgen@botz.org>]

On 05/21/2010 11:45 PM, Ben Martin Horst wrote:
> Palm oil is all around nasty, both in social and environmental effects.

I have to chime in here to defend the poor oil palm.  It's not a
fault that she produces so much of an excellent product so easily,
and it's not her fault that the agro-industrial complex will abuse,
corrupt and pervert any good thing it gets its hands on.

And really no plant is "nasty ... in environmental effects" by
herself, but almost any plant can be that if grown in gigantic
mono-cultures!  However, even in monoculture oil palm plantations
are probably less harmful than many other agro-industrial
productions because they require little fertilization and have
few pests (so probably not a lot of pestizides are used).  I'm
not defending the people who cut down forests to plant oil palms
here... I'm only saying that if they'd cut down that forrest and
planted something else it might be even nastier.

The oil palm is a beautiful plant which produces an abundance of
easy to harvest and process fruits which are also a source of food
for many wild creatures.  The fruit can be easily processed into
the extremely healthy and vitamin-rich red palm oil at the "cottage"
level (I have done so myself) or used whole for animal feed.  The
kernel oil is also easy to extract once the kernels are shelled,
and despite propaganda against it from the soybean industry, it is
actually a healthy medium-chain saturated fatty acid oil that
it stable (i.e. doesn't easily become trans-fatty acids) for one
or two years at room temperature without any kind of preservatives
and can withstand cooking temperatures better than most vegetable
oils.

The oil palm will also grow well nearly anywhere in the humid
tropics and can easily be integrated into agroforestry systems.
Her habit of keeping the bases of old fronds on her trunk like
scales provides a rich ecosystem for epiphytic plants (she seems
to have some sort of symbiosis with some species of ferns
specifically) and small animals.

It only takes a few of them to supply a family with all the
cooking oil they might need, as well as many of the vitamins!
Everybody who lives in the right climatic zone should have at
least one oil palm!

So neither the palm nor its two oils are nasty... only the humans
and corporations who as always want as much of a good thing as
possible as cheaply as possible.

:j