Processed Food Is Causing Tropical Deforestation

While the link to quality food, supermarkets processed foods, deforestation and climate change is not in the forefront of many peoples minds, the link is a direct one.

The food industry will always use the cheapest ingredients it can source. While there is the obvious link regarding the miles that food travels, however the more damaging problem is in fact regarding the use of palm oil in almost all processed foods. The economics are simple, palm oil, freshly processed from Indonesia sells for less than .09 pence (20 cents US) per kilo. Thus as would any business, the food industry uses palm oil by the tonne (many million tonnes), as a way of maximising profits. Something that all businesses are legally required to do for the benefit of shareholders.

While all the talk in the media has been about palm oil as a bio-fuel, an alternative to petrol and diesel. What people are failing to recognise is that there already is a very high demand for palm oil from the food industry. Also it has to be said, most soap is made with palm oil. The brand Palmolive takes his name quite simply from the fact that it is made from 90per cent Palm Oil and ten percent Olive Oil. I am not singling out that particular brand as almost all soap is made using Palm Oil.

Therefore, in relation to climate change, the bio-fuel industry will have a tough time sourcing enough palm oil. While this commodity pressure should be good prices, the reverse is actually the reality. This is because vast areas of rain forest is being felled and replanted with palm oil. In Borneo half of the rain forest has been lost in the last fifteen years. While some NGOs are saying that this has happened in the last ten years, but I am quoting and relying on official figures here.
While the governments of Borneo and Papa New Guinea, are trying to stop this happening the planters are getting in the illegal loggers and clearing the land. It has also happened by burning down the forest, but as the timber can be sold even as illegally felled timber, the companies that create the plantations are creating clear land. The governments then agree to this now cleared land being planted with palm oil.

This is creating an oversupply, that is depressing the price of the palm oil. Additionally because of the loss of government revenues from managed and sustainable logging that the illegal logging, it is no wonder that the governments agree to these new plantations being established. These are developing countries who do not have the resources to replant the forests.

There are other financial and social impacts from the use of palm oil by the western food industry. As many of the peoples that live on and around the land where the plantations are established are predominantly creating and deriving their livelihoods from the forests, they loose their means of existence. Often these indigenous peoples are not earning money or generating monies by this hunting and gathering, their needs are ignored. However, without their traditional lives, they then become a burden on the state as they become jobless even homeless.

This is the reality of our so called cheap food in the UK and the west. Furthermore we already have many other fats and oils that could be used in manufacturing these processed foods are available. Olive oil, Grape seed oil are but two and they are considered beneficial for health. They are not used not because they are drastically more expensive but because they can not be manipulated to greatly extend shelf life. That also raises a question about how fresh our food really is, but I may tackle that at a later date. However, with all the problems of obesity that we face in the western world, in my mind at least it makes me wonder if the prolific use of palm oil in our foods is part of the problem? That said what is clear is that precessed food is a significant contributing factor in deforestation.

While this posting has focused upon the unknown or ignored aspects of why our food industry and our eating habits are significantly adding to deforestation, and our changing climate, as in Borneo deforestation is placing the Orang-utan at serious risk of extinction. All this as a direct result of our demand for palm oil. Climate change affects us all, in ways that most people don't understand or realise, from the poor displaced peoples in Indonesia to the rise in obesity in the west. That is why conservation is really important for all our futures.

As climate change is a reality we all need to send signals to the food industry and stop them supporting, indirectly, illegal logging and directly other unethical business practises.