PALM OIL: ORIGIN & SUSTAINABILITY
New PhD project starting Oct 21 with Matthew Ashpole
What is Palm Oil?
Palm Oil is a vegetable oil that is almost as widespread in food as plastic is in appliances with almost 50% of all packaged goods containing Palm Oil. It goes by many different names and is not the easiest thing to track down on an ingredients list. It’s safe to say that as our food system gets more and more processed, Palm Oil will become more and more ubiquitous.
The producing plant, Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis), originated from between Angola and Gambia in West & Southwest Africa. During its early production, it was not the crop we see today – yields were low, and labour was high, as pollination was required to be done by hand! This inefficiency was overturned however when the pollinating Palm Weevil was introduced to do some of the heavy lifting for us. Their introduction into plantations made the process significantly faster and allowed for the Palm Oil boom we see today – Palm Oil production has increased 35* from 2 million tonnes in 1970 to 71 million tonnes in 2018 and produces 36% of the world’s Oil. And you can see why – Palm Oil’s yield is 4.7* that of the next three vegetable oils!
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How is Palm Oil produced and what are its impacts?
Palm Oil is now produced through various African nations and South East Asia, with Indonesia and Malaysia taking 85% of production. At 30 months old, Oil Palm trees can be harvested for the first time, then repeated every 7-10 days. Harvesting involves removal of Fresh Fruit Bunches (FFB), that are then transported to mills and pressed for their Palm Oil (from the Mesocarp), and Palm Kernel Oil (PKO, from the Kernel). The husks are then returned to plantations to be used for moisture retention over the soil, then later fertilizer post-decomposition. This sounds like a straightforward and somewhat sustainable process, right? Unfortunately, for Oil Palm to expand the way it has, the same proportion of previously forested land must be converted. The Palm Oil industry is therefore the biggest cause of deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia, and has been known to reduce biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and increase the conversion of carbon rich Peat soils in its typical cultivation. This has caused Palm Oil to be a bittersweet commodity of high efficiency alongside high exploitation… So, what is being done to combat this?
Why sustainable Palm Oil is important & a description of certifications
Sustainability in the Palm Oil industry is achievable and is imperative to the commodity’s future, leading this to become the focal goal in order to bring Palm Oil’s reputation to a role model position for other industries. At the centre of this movement toward sustainability are certification bodies – multi-stakeholder and/or governmental organisations who develop a standard containing detailed ‘Principles & Criteria’ (P&Cs) that a plantation must adhere to in order to receive a sustainability certification from the organisation.
The largest three certification schemes are: The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil Standard (ISPO), and Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil Standard (MSPO). These schemes aim to enhance sustainability in all target areas by setting stringent rules for employee conditions and wages, prohibition of expansion onto primary forest or peatland, and protection of High Conservation Value (HCV), High Biodiversity Value (HBV), and High Carbon Stock (HCS) areas.
So far, 20% of global Palm Oil is RSPO certified, with both the ISPO and MSPO moving toward mandatory membership to lift baseline standards. 20% may not sound like a lot, but as more consumers recognise the ‘RSPO certified’ logo on products in supermarkets and make the conscious switch to purchasing more certified items, demand for certified product will increase thus incentivising plantation owners in producing countries to pursue certification themselves!
Identifying the importance of our research / plugging the research group at QUB
The next most important step to ensuring a future of sustainable Palm Oil is tracking and verifying the commodity through the supply chain. Two typical supply chain models are undertaken in the Palm Oil industry: Identity Preserved (IP) and Mass Balance (MB). IP sees certified sustainable Palm Oil segregated from non-certified product, with a complex contract system (e.g. PalmTrace) to preserve its certified status from a single Mill to the Manufacturer. MB sees certified material mixed with non-certified Oil at a set minimum percentage, then manufactured into products advertised as MB certified. For this system to be reputable, we must be sure that the Palm Oil being sent and received along the supply chain is really from where it is claimed to be, and that the practices at this location followed sustainability standards.
Here at Queen’s University Belfast, we’re aiming to be the first to create an analytical methodology for the authentication of Palm Oil’s origin for both Crude and Kernel Palm Oil through a combination of Mass Spectrometry methods and the measurement of stable isotope ratios, multi-elemental concentrations and metabolomic profiles to build a mechanistic understanding of the relationship between soil and plant tissue chemistry to determine geographic origin.
This work is made possible by the facilities at Queen’s School of Biological Sciences.
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