🌴 Palm oil and the environment: Healthy practices for the ecosystem

Before there were street lights in European cities, ancient Benin kingdom had street lights fueled by palm oil.

While we're no longer in the age of powering our lamps with oil, it's imperative to note that this natural occurring wild palm trees have a high nutritional value which is valuable for our health needs. 

However, our competitors pride themselves in high yielding genetically modified palm oil (aka agric palm oil, these are usually stunted and fast yielding palm trees which delivers high volume extracts), which is abundant, cheaper and easily gotten. The long term effects of all genetically engineered foods on the human body can not be over emphasized, this and the huge environmental devastation recorded in palm oil producing countries has led to the call for boycott of palm oil use.

At 66 million tons annually, palm oil is the most commonly produced vegetable oil. Its low world market price and properties that lend themselves to processed foods have led the food industry to use it in half of all supermarket products. Palm oil can be found in frozen pizzas, biscuits and margarine, as well as body creams, soaps, makeup, candles and detergents.

Few people realize that almost half of the palm oil imported into the EU is used as biofuel. Since 2009, the mandatory blending of biofuels into motor vehicle fuels has been a major cause of deforestation.

Oil palm plantations currently cover more than 27 million hectares of the Earth’s surface. Forests and human settlements have been destroyed and replaced by “green deserts” containing virtually no biodiversity on an area the size of New Zealand. (Rainforest-rescue.org)

But for all its problems, boycotting palm oil is not a solution. Commitments like Helambergo Enterprise's that ensure only good palm oil is used, is the best route forward. Palm oil is everywhere. No cookie-eating, soap-using, clean-clothed urbanite could really avoid using palm oil and its derivatives. Its also a critical part of the many community economy, providing crucial income to these rural communities and pumping money into this burgeoning countries. So lets not ruin what is good about palm oil already by boycotting it, and instead lets drive the industry toward commitments to avoid what is bad about palm oil. Palm oil has an image problem rooted in the fact that in many cases it is not being produced responsibly. And the answer certainly doesn't rest with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which despite having sustainable in its name, cannot guarantee to break the link between palm oil and forest destruction. And the answer is not to boycott a commodity that is crucial to many economies, and practically unavoidable in the products we consume. So, what do we do about it?

Here are 3 things that would make a good start: 

1. Demand companies implement a No Deforestation Policy.

2. Spread the word that good palm oil exists.

3. Buy amberneg cooking oil and spread the word. Helambergo Enterprise is strictly involved in only naturally occurring wild palm extracts (aka red palm oil). And our price is unbeatably affordable. Even though we want to contribute our quota to the UN vision of "food for all", only healthy farm practise and distribution will get us there. We'll not give you food and take your health and environment in the long run.

The outcry of environmentalists on destruction of the forest due to ever expanding palm tree plantation is in the bead to plant more fast yielding trees. The practice may have good economical advantage but the attendant deforestation is frightening. Wild Palm trees are usually sparsely located and co-exist with other trees, there's also allowance for the farming of other crops