InfoSAWIT, JAKARTA -There is a question we need to think of together – might the world be without palm oil? Let us notice the data from Oil World in 2016. The vegetable oil consumption in the world reached 177 million tons within the average additional consumption per year reaching 5 million tons. The needs of consumption are fulfilled by crude palm oil, reaching 64 million tons; soybean 53,15 million tons; rapeseed 27,65 million tons;sunflower oil 15,55 million tons; and the rests are from bean, coconut, and olive oil.
In America and European Union, there are more than one hundred kinds of food products and non-food consumer goods having palm oil as the material, such as, cosmetic, tooth paste, detergent, and many more. Now and may be 20 years to go, the consumer goods industries in America and West European countries would depend on palm oil to continue their business.
Compared to other kinds of vegetable oil, palm oil has the highest productivity, that is, 3,5 tons of crude palm oil per hectare per year. Having the highest productivity, “only” from a 20 million hectare area whole over the world, palm oil plantation could produce the highest vegetable oil of all its competitors. In 2016, crude palm oil production reached 60,5 million tons or mastered 29,4% of all vegetable oil in the world. Soybean was planted in 121,9 million hectares, and just produced 51 million tons or 24,8% of total vegetable oil production in the world.
To fulfill the additional vegetable oil needs in the world in every single year, most of vegetable oil plantations do area expansion. In 2012 – 2016, the data from Oil World noted, the area expansion for soybean reached 16,29 million hectares. Meanwhile, in the same period, palm oil expansion whole over the world just reached 3,1 million hectares. So it is clear that to fulfill the additional needs of vegetable oil in the world by postponing deforestation, developing palm oil is better than developing soybean or other kinds of vegetable oil. From the supply aspect, the countries consuming palm oil the most are India, China, Pakistan, and European Union. It is clear too, palm oil could not be substituted by other kinds of vegetable oil.(Chairman of IPOA, Joko Supriyono)
