PALM oil, Malaysia’s star crop, is sustainable for the next 100 years or more provided the industry acts responsibly.

Industry consultant M.R. Chandran said big food companies worldwide

such as Nestle, Unilever, Pepsico, Cadbury, Kraft, Wal Mart and others

do not produce food.

“They merely change it, buy it, freeze it,

dry it, process it, package it, market it and sell it. Remember, they

do not produce it.

“It is the farmers and planters of the world

who actually produce it and the oil palm industry is one of the most

efficient food producers in the developing world,” Chandran told

participants of the third annual palm oil trade fair and seminar 2010 in

Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

He said this in his working paper entitled “Sustainability : challenges and opportunities for palm oil”.

Chandran said the industry must endeavour to create sustainable

natural resources for the crop as it is an inevitable and necessary

conclusion because the environment is too important to be left to

environmentalists alone.

On another note, Chandran, who is

former Malaysian Palm Oil Association chief executive officer, said the

industry must fully embrace the commodity alliance grouping Roundtable

on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

RSPO advocates green oil and there is no reason for customers not to refuse to use green palm oil.

RSPO is already a success story compared to other commodity alliances.

He said to date a total of 2.3 million tonnes of Malaysian and

Indonesian palm oil were certified as sustainable palm oil by RSPO,

which has a total of 453 members worldwide comprising producers,

consumers, retailers, banks, non governmental organisations and others.

Source : Business Times