Palm Oil

Palm Oil has a ubiquity seldom found in any other food crop. The crop is worth about $50 billion/yr. It is said that between one in every two (some say 10) products found in supermarkets contains palm oil - often appearing as 'vegetable oil'. Palm Oil is found mainly in cooking oil and margarine, but also ice cream (instead of milk!) in ready-to-eat-meals, bread, baby food and chocolate. It is now one of the main ingredients in ultra-processed foods. Kernal (see graphic) oil goes to make soap and cosmetics.The Elaeis (greek for 'oil') from a genus of palms, comprises two species. Elaeis guineens is the main source of palm oil and originated in West Africa.

Production has increased from around 2 million tonnes in the early sixties to over 50 million tonnes now. Over 80% of that is grown in Asia, particularly Indonesia and Malaysia, with over 3/4 grown on massive plantations. There have been significant increases in production in Americas and Africa in the last 10 years, driven by the demand for biodiesel. Consumption may triple by 2050. (Facts & Figures) If the challenges to environment (Global Warming and wiping out Apes) along with social side effects (like land grabbing & pushing off local farmers bringing in foreign workers) are met.

Palm oil was used as a local food source by European travellers to West Africa and in 16 & 17th centuries, red palm oil became an important item in the developing trade network supplying caravans and ships of the Atlantic slave trade. The 18th century saw the British industrial revolution that created palm oil demand for candle-making and as a lubricant for machines. This was supplied by a modest export trade from West Africa.Then in the early 19th century European-run plantations were set up in Central Africa and Southeast Asia. 

At the beginning of the 20th century there were two major technological developments. One was 'hydrogenation' whereby the palm oil could be transformed into an edible solid fat. And German investment in Cameroon brought about the discovery of the Tenera breed of palm oil, a high-yielding breed used today in large-scale plantations. Palm oil is an ideal plantation crop, being perennial and yielding fruit every few days, therby providing continuus flow to the manufacturing part of the process.But, according to P P Courteny (Plantation Agriculture p 74), "as a result of the reluctance of British colonial governments to permit the alienation of land in densely peopled regions in West Africa (see p64), estate development in Commonwealth West Africa is limited"'. That may also explain why cocoa is still grown there in small holdings.. 'Alienation of land' meant use of imported capital and management driving peasant farmers off their land and forced to come back and work it'. Thus, when in 1907 William Lever sought large-scale land concessions in the British West African colonies in order to produce palm oil for his Lancashire soap mills at Port Sunlight, the Colonial Office was reluctant to help him. It was felt that Lever's scheme would be 'hard to administer, politcially risky and unsound (Oil Palm in Africa Past & Present)

So, palm oil was introduced into Malaysia by a Scot William Sime, a bit of an adventurer and Henry Darby a rich banker who already owned property in Northern Malay. It seems that they took the 'Deli' form based on palms that we introduced into Java (Buitenzorg Botanique Gardens) in mid 1800s from Dutch (Amsterdam Botanic Gardens) and French (Bourbon) stock (presumably originating in West Africa) and made the into plantation crop, thus providing "yet another example of the largest commercial production of an economic crop far removed from its centre of origin" (J W Purseglove Tropical Crops Monocotyledons p482) The quality was far superior to that from Nigeria."This superiority probably reflected the optimal soils, rainfall, and sunshine conditions of Southeast Asia, rather than any special genetic quirks of the Buitenzorg palms. However, the fact that all the Deli Duras were descended from so few parents meant that the early planters could expect fairly uniform results (Rosenquist 1986). This lowered the risks associated with plantation cultivation, an effect reinforced by the absence of the palm’s usual pests and diseases in its new geographic setting" (more). Or it may have more to do with economics...

Sime and Darby established Sime, Darby and Co. that started as a fledgling player in the lucrative rubber industry, but later diversified to cultivating palm oil and met with enormous success to become one the largest companies in the world - to this day (see below)) .In the classic way of plantations, they need not only large capital outlay, they also need large tracts of land (so not near urban areas) and a lot of cheap labour. And again the British bought that labour from India - a largely Tamil workforce, to work the plantations, first rubber then, in the 1920s, palm oil, which is much more profitable per acre. In Malaysia, Tamil Indians are proletarian rather than peasant, but nevertheless are well represented in  the unions and political parties - see Malaysian Tamils See Tamils on the Plantation Frontier in Malaysia

So, despite British colonial policy to deliberately favour peasant production, it is a similar story of the role of colonialists in transforming crop from small farmer in one place to plantations elsewhere. More from Green Palm

Sime Darby is an international conglomerate involved in many types of businesses ranging from aerospace to tourism, although the plantation sector remains the most important. Sime Darby is one of the largest palm oil producers in the world, supplying about 6% of total. The company has over 500,000 hectares and a land bank over 900,000 hectares. About two-thirds comes from Malaysia, and one-third from Indonesia, but has recently started to develop estates in Liberia. Local environmental and human rights groups have called Sime Darby's contract with the Liberian government a "land grab," and say that the contract does not account for the ownership rights of the rural communities who live inside the concession area. Following a complaint to The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) by representatives of one community, SimeDarby paid a million dollars compensation BSI gives Sime Darby a clean bill of health on plantation in Malaysia. , SimeDarby Caring Employer