Malaysia, Indonesia Will Pump Out 40% More Palm Oil Biodiesel

Malaysia and Indonesia decided this week to convert surpluses of edible palm oil into biodiesel fuel.

Currently, the two southeast Asian countries grow about 85% of the world’s palm oil and control 88% of all palm oil exports. But amid stalled plans for more production plants and a slowing demand for palm oil, the countries are beginning to worry.

The proposal to turn so much food to fuel comes as an attempt to increase demand for palm biodiesel and drive up prices. In 2007, palm oil biodiesel prices made a dizzying 80% jump to over $944 per tonne. However, when prices hit  today’s price of $871 per tonne lags just below prices seven months ago.

[To read the whole article, head over to EcoWorldly]

As we all know from Nitedreamer's wiki and the Great Greenwashing wiki....Malaysian palm oil is less good.....and I can't imagine that forcing an increased demand will be a good thing when it comes to preventing deforestation.

Oh great that's just what we need to do - increase demand for Malaysian palm oil and subsequently deforestation.

Damnit Malaysia and Indonesia!

I understand that they worry about their economy, but I think they would be much better off fostering eco-tourism.  :(

Yeah, that would potentially be a much more environmentally and economically sustainable business.  I guess time will tell....

Ever since finding out about palm oil we have been trying to not buy anything with it in it. This is surprisingly difficult to do.

The local zoo here had a baby Orangutan born in January, I wish they would put up some information about palm oil there. It seems like such a good opportunity to educate the public about the issue.

Yeah, I tried emailing Cascadian Farms about their palm oil usage-

We buy several of your products. We recently looked at buying some of your granola bars, and were disappointed to see the use of palm oil in your products. Palm oil is causing very serious problems with deforestation and will lead to the extinction of orangutans within ten years. Efforts to sustainably gather palm oil are not effective. We did not buy your granola bars, and are not comfortable buying other products from your company, as long as you continue to use palm oil in your products. Please change your recipes.

and got this reply:

On behalf of Cascadian Farm, thank you for contacting us regarding our use of palm oil in our products.

There are advantages gained by using a small amount of tropical oil in food manufacturing. The process for making our products requires a more solid fat/oil. Palm oil works well in the process because it is naturally more saturated than solid fat, and therefore, we do not have to use hydrogenated oil. We feel it is important to keep our products free of partially hydrogenated and fully hydrogenated oils.

Manufacturing parameters associated with the production of foods are completely different than those associated with the fried potato chip or tortilla chip systems so familiar to the natural food industry. These parameters require totally different oil blends. This system may seem unusual in light of the negative reputation tropical oils have developed because of the saturated fats associated with them. This reputation results primarily from the pure coconut oil blends that have been used for popping theater popcorn. The functional need for a small amount of palm oil has allowed us to reduce the amount of total fat and saturated fat in these products.

Again, thank you for giving us the opportunity to respond to your concerns.  If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us again. Our Consumer Services toll-free telephone number is 1-800-624-4123. Your questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome.

Sincerely,

Alexandria Richards
Consumer Services

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They completely missed the point.  :(