Pros and cons of SL’s palm oil industry
Posted on June 16th, 2023
Sugath Kulatunga
| Pros and cons of SL’s palm oil industry |
| Jun 16 (TM) The use of palm oil and the cultivation of oil palm have remained a controversial topic for years, with back and forth debates as to whether the potential harms of palm oil or oil palm cultivation outweigh their potential benefits. I |
The knee-jerk ban on Oil Palm was another decision taken without proper investigation, perhaps based on a biased CEA report on the subject. Firstly, the very composition of the CEA team report was defective. The lead members of the team were from CRI and RRI which had a direct stake in the spread of oil palm, in the marketing of coconut oil and land for both coconut and rubber. Scientists who had done extensive work on oil palm had no place in this Committee.
The proposal at the time of the decision to introduce oil palm was to identify 20,000 ha of suitable land in the major plantations for the purpose. This extent was adequate to produce the island’s requirement which was at that time was 80,000 MT. It was also noted that while coconut gave a return of Rs 175, 000 per ha, oil palm generated Rs 514,000 per annum. A major criticism of the oil palm is that it has a high evapotranspiration rate than that of rubber which is not scientifically confirmed in the local scene. This claim deliberately ignores the fact that the density of trees per hectare is very different which is 123 in oil palm and 520 in rubber. This reduces the difference of evapotranspiration to less than 10 percent.
We should be pleased that the Minister has not yielded to the subterfuges of the western vegetable lobby. They started by protesting that thousands of hectares of natural forests were causing environmental damage. They did not worry about the massive damage done to the Amazon forests. The next objection was that the natural habitat of the Orangutan was destroyed. The current objection is on human rights that labor rights are denied. Despite all these machinations, the oil palm industry is today meeting around 50% of the global needs of vegetable oil.
It is incomprehensible (like on many other recent issues) why this product which is a winner was totally banned based on unscientific and biased information. The bans inspired by pseudo professional like this one, the mini railway and the chemical fertilizer has done serious damage to this country.