Subject: [permaculture] ADM's New Frontiers: Palm Oil Deforestation and Child Labor
Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 18:57:52 -0400
ADM's New Frontiers: Palm Oil Deforestation and Child Labor
by Charlie Cray, Special to CorpWatch
May 18th, 2010
ADM used to be known as the country’s corporate welfare king, and its
top executives drew headlines as they perp-walked to prison. That was
then, when the company ran elaborate price-fixing schemes in the lysine
and other global commodity markets. This is now: For the second year in
a row, ADM topped Fortune magazine’s list of most admired food
production companies.
But underneath its improved public image, ADM’s major forays into new
markets, including cocoa and palm oil, are raising concerns. This time
they center on the impacts of the global food conglomerate’s supply
chain, and on charges of complicity in forced child labor and massive
deforestation.
The Palm Oil Food Chain of Destruction
About 40 million tons of palm oil worth $20 billion is produced each
year – 85 percent of it by Indonesia and Malaysia, where giant oil palm
plantations account for the highest rates of deforestation in the world.
As of 2009, more than seven million hectares of palm oil plantations had
been planted where forests super-rich in diversity once stood. Within a
couple of decades, the deforestation is projected to triple to more than
20 million hectares.
While most palm oil is processed for cooking oil, biofuels and other
uses in China and Southeast Asia, U.S. consumption has tripled in the
past five years, making North America the fastest-growing market. Most
palm oil exported to the United States – one million tons in 2008/2009 –
is extracted from the hard kernel at the center of the fruit, and
processed into a variety of ingredients for food products, including
vitamins.
U.S. consumers might be shocked to learn that an estimated 10 percent of
common grocery goods – including chips and crackers, ice cream,
margarine, instant noodles, chocolate, cereals, canned vegetables,
soaps, shampoos, cosmetics and detergents – already contain some kind of
palm oil ingredient. They might be doubly shocked to learn that palm oil
is implicated in the same health problems that are driving trans fats
out of the market. Merely replacing trans fatty acids with other
artery-clogging saturated vegetable fats not only does little to bring
down the incidence of heart attacks and strokes (still the top killers
in America for public health), but it is also fueling deforestation and
social injustice halfway across the planet.