How palm oil can reduce deforestation

If we can find sustainable places and ways to farm it, growing palm oil could actually help us avoid deforestation. This is not a video about biodiversity or health choices. Palm plantations actually use up the least land for the amount of oil they produce. Palm oil’s bad reputation is largely down to the harrowing images of habitat loss. Any habitat loss is a tragedy and our responsibility, however, just cutting out palm oil could make the problem worse. Because if we simply replace palm oil with different oils, most of the alternatives require more land. We currently use 322 million hectares to grow oil crops, equivalent to the size of India. If we were to get it all from palm oil, we’d only need 77 million hectares (a quarter of what we’re using now). If we got it all from olive oil, we’d need twice as much land as we use now. Currently Indonesia and Malaysia produce 85% of the world’s palm oil, which was the biggest driver of deforestation in the first decade of this millennium, but it has since become one of the smallest. #PalmOil #Deforestation #ClimateCrisis #Environment