palm oil

[1of1]

I was just watching bbc world news and saw that indonesia makes 5 billion pounds a year from this industry as it is in demand as the cheapest vegetable oil on the market down side to it though, is deforestation from the palm plantations.

is it viable for us?

[ReggaeMike]

I was just watching bbc world news and saw that indonesia makes 5 billion pounds a year from this industry as it is in demand as the cheapest vegetable oil on the market down side to it though, is deforestation from the palm plantations.

is it viable for us?

Unlikely. Palms take a while to grow (longer than sugar cane if I recall correctly) and they require space.

Just remember that Indonesia is among the 20 largest countries on earth (over 150 times the size of Jamaica) and that from one end of the archipelago to the other it is comparable in distance to travelling from the West Coast of the US to the East Coast of the US.

Indonesia could implement economies of scale with plants such as these to make them viable. Jamaica with it's size and expensive labour probably couldn't.

[1of1]

just learned that most things that have vegetable oil listed on the label as ingredients are predomonantly palm oil based, like flora margarine, and also majority of products in europe that use vegetable oil, bath and beauty products etc,

[1of1]

ok thats why its so cheap

[Willi]

Margarine is normally hydrogenated Omega 5 unsaturated fat...not palm oil which is saturated, like coconut oil, no?

[1of1]

mi don't know, the man on the prgramme used flora as an example and said where you see vegetable oil on the ingredients it is usually palm oil mixed wit other oils, he said this recipe will change regularly hence they cannot state with a fact on the labels the content of the vegetable oil