May 27, 2006 - New Straits Times - Saturday Forum, Page 19 - A distortion of facts, by palm oil critics by Yusof Basiron. As reported, a TOP level team of experts was assembled by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council in London last week for a symposium on Sustainable Resource Development. This was in response to strongly worded statements in the London media from NGOs who had tried to associate palm oil with the habitat loss of orang utan, in view of the expansion of palm oil production in recent years. Yeah, baby, it gets juicier ....
When statistics on the percentage of Malaysian land devoted to forestry, agriculture and palm oil were revealed and compared with the equivalent status for agriculture in Britain, it was a big eye opener for the audience.
Malaysia devotes six million of its 33 million hectares of lans to agriculture, of which two-thirds or four million hectares are under oil palm cultivation. Yet the four million hectares of oil palm produces twice as much oxygen as generated by the 17 million hectares of agricultural crops in Britain. This underscores the superiority of oil palm in generating oxygen for the benefit of the world.
 Cutting a long story short, the plantation industry in Malaysia is professionally managed and the Malaysian palm oil industry can safely claim that its cultivation is comparatively seperior to ANY large-scale agriculture in the tropics or the temperate countries in terms of sustainable parameters.
Further, it should be ideal for the EU or Britain to fololow the standard set by Malaysia in having more than 50 percent of its land under forest cover by converting agricultural land into forest for generating conditions of higher conservation and diversity.
The anti-palm oil hysteria by NGOs is mainly a distortion of real facts or good practices long adopted in Malaysia.
- Why did the NGOs try to portray palm oil negatively by urging consumers to avoid palm oil products which come from unsustainable sources?
- How can they accuse or imply that Malaysia palm oil is not sustainable?
Hmmm ... shame on you ... aiyaa tak tau lah ...
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This is very interesting site... » »