Palm oil

what is palm oil?

Palm oil is an important and versatile  oil which is used as a raw material for both food and non food industries.

composition

palm oil, like all fats, is composed of fatty acids, esterified with glycerol. palm oil has an especially high concentration of saturated fat, specially, of the 16-carbon chain saturated fatty acid palmatic acid, to which it gives it name. monosatuated oleic acid is also a major constituent of palm oil. un refined palm is also a significant source of tocotrienol,part of the vitamin E family.

Efficiency

Harvested all year round, oil palm tree produce in avarage 10 tonnes of fruits per hactter far morfe then soya bean, seeed and sunflower crops.
palm oil impects
The areas being cleard for palm oil are particularly rich in carbon. Indoneshia forest store even more carbon per hectare then brazilian amazon thanks to their carbon-rich soil;
palm cultivation there was responsible for 2% to 9% of worldwide emission from tropical land use between 2000 and 2010. In malaysia,the carbon stock of tropical forest can range up to 99 million kilograms of carbon per square mile. Thats equivalent to the emissions from driving an avarage car from new york to  San francisco and back 76 times.
one huge source of global warming emossions associated with palm oil is the draining and burning of the carbon-rich swamps known as peatlands. peatlands can hold up to 18 to 28 times as much as carbon as the forest above them ;
when they are drained and buried , both the carbon methane are released into the atmosphere and unless the water tables is restored, peatlands continue to decay and release gobal warming emission for decades.
as if there was not bad enough, the burning of the peatlands releases a dangerous haze into the air, resulting in severe health impacts and significants economic losses. Each year, more then 100.000 deaths in southeast Asia can be attributed to particulate matter exposure from landscape fires, many of which are peat fires.
beyond its global warming and human health impacts, palm oil production also takes a toll on biodiversity and human rights. Only 15% of native animals species.

Social and enviromental impacts

The palm oil industry has had both positive and negative impacts on workers, indigenous peoples and residents of palm oil-producing communities. Palm oil production provides employment opportunities, and has been shown to improve infrastructure, social services and reduce poverty. However, in some cases, oil palm plantations have developed lands without consultation or compensation of the indigenous people occupying the land, resulting in social conflict. The use of illegal immigrants in Malaysia has also raised concerns about working conditions within the palm oil industrySome social initiatives use palm oil cultivation as part of poverty alleviation strategies. Examples include the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's hybrid oil palm project in Western Kenya, which improves incomes and diets of local populations, and Malaysia's Federal Land Development Authority and Federal Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Authority, which both support rural development.

food vs fuel

 The use of palm oil in the production of biodiesel has led to concerns that the need for fuel is being placed ahead of the need for food, leading to malnourishment in developing nations. This is known as the food versus fuel debate. According to a 2008 report published in the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, palm oil was determined to be a sustainable source of both food and biofuel. The production of palm oil biodiesel does not pose a threat to edible palm oil supplies. According to a 2009 study published in the Environmental Science and Policy journal, palm oil biodiesel might increase the demand for palm oil in the future, resulting in the expansion of palm oil production, and therefore an increased supply of food

Environmental 

 Palm oil cultivation has been criticized for impacts on the natural environment, including deforestation, loss of natural habitats, which has threatened critically endangered species such as the orangutan and Sumatran tiger, and increased greenhouse gas emissions. Many palm oil plantations are built on top of existing peat bogs, and clearing the land for palm oil cultivation contributes to rising greenhouse gas emissions. Efforts to portray palm oil cultivation as sustainable have been made by organizations including the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil,  an industry group, and the Malaysian government, which has committed to preserve 50 percent of its total land area as forest. According to research conducted by the Tropical Peat Research Laboratory, a group studying palm oil cultivation in support of the industry, oil palm plantations act as carbon sinks, converting carbon dioxide into oxygen and, according to Malaysia's Second National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the plantations contribute to Malaysia's status as a net carbon sink. Environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth oppose the use of palm oil biofuels, claiming that the deforestation caused by oil palm plantations is more damaging for the climate than the benefits gained by switching to biofuel and utilizing the palms as carbon sinks.  While only 5 percent of the world's vegetable oil farmland is used for palm plantations, palm cultivation produces 38 percent of the world's total vegetable oil supply. In terms of oil yield, a palm plantation is 10 times more productive than soya bean and rapeseed cultivation because the palm fruit and kernel both provide usable oil Found in everything from shampoo to donuts, palm oil is now the most common vegetable oil in the world—and also one of the world's leading deforestation drivers.  Palm oil is extracted from the fruit of the oil palm tree, Elaeis guineensis, which thrives in humid climates. The large majority of palm oil production occurs in just two countries, Malaysia and Indonesia, where huge swaths of tropical forests and peatlands (carbon-rich swamps) are being cleared to make way for oil palm plantations, releasing carbon into the atmosphere to drive global warming while shrinking habitats for a multitude of endangered species.  

Effects of agroforestry on modern agriculture

Agroforestry systems are inherently more resilient to weather extremes than many traditional cropping systems. Agroforestry practices utilise perennial vegetation and multiple species that provide greater plant diversity with less vulnerability to climate stress than is provided by monocultures. The perennial woody vegetation itself also modifies the local microclimate. The trees and shrubs influence airflow and sunlight interception patterns, protecting the understory and adjacent plants from extremes in temperature and damaging winds. The deep rooting by the perennial vegetation also affords greater resilience to drought and increased exploitation of soil water and nutrients from soil layers not readily available to more shallow rooted annual crops. Greater efficiency of agroforestry systems in water use and nutrient cycling is a key strength and further enhances their efficacy under the uncertainties of climate change.

The overriding objective of future agricultural land use will be on optimising productivity from the available land base. Agroforestry systems are easily adaptable to the concept of sustainable intensification. Each component can be managed to optimise production while the perennial species provide system resilience and ameliorate climate stresses. Soil degradation by erosion, salinity, and pollution and loss of prime quality farmland due to urbanisation and development continue to reduce the amount of land available for agriculture. Some new areas can be brought into production but often with lower productivity and at great cost due to the necessary investment in infrastructure (roads, irrigation, utilities, etc.).

Agroforestry land use planing

 Role of Agroforestry on alternate land use planning

Modern commercial plantations of crops like rubber, coffee, and oil palm represent a well-managed, profitable, and environmentally stable land-use activity in the tropics. The scope for integrative practices involving plant associations is limited, except perhaps during the early phases of plantation establishment, because the commercial production of these crops has been developed with the single-commodity objective to such an extent that multi-use resource development in large-scale plantations is considered impractical. Diversified production strategies impede modernization and efficiency of traditional plantation management technologies. Thus, it seems that there is no rationale for diversified production in such plantation areas; nor has the technology for such possibilities been adequately developed to make such alternatives economically attractive.
On the other hand, the situation is quite different under smallholder1 farming conditions where the two major production functions,  land and capital, are limiting, and the farmer's objective is not maximization of a single commodity. In many such cases, especially in densely populated areas, farmers usually integrate annual crop and animal production with perennial crops, primarily to  meet their  food  requirements.  It is  for  these  innumerable smallholder areas that perennial-crop associations and integrated land-use practices are becoming increasingly important.
Contrary to popular belief, a substantial proportion of tropical plantation crops is grown by smallholders as reviewed by Ruthenberg (1980), Nair (1983), Watson (1983), and Nair (1989) (Figures 8.1 and 8.2). Most of the cacao production in Ghana and Nigeria, for example, comes from smallholdings. Cacao is usually grown in association with a specific crop, such as maize, cassava, banana, cucumber, and sweet potato, especially during the first four years after planting the cacao. The size of the holding varies widely from one

Agroforestry sustainable development

Role of Argo-forestry in sustainable development