ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
Greasing the palm of global disaster
The profit motive drives the unbridled monoculture of the most widely used vegetable product on earth and a new book eloquently demonstrates why that is such a threat, says SUE TURNER
DAMAGING MONOCULTURE: A palm oil plantation in Cigudeg, Bogor
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
Planet Palm
by Jocelyn C Zuckerman
(Hurst, £20)
THE TITLE of this book gives a strong sense of the ubiquity of palm products today: its oil is the most widely used vegetable product on the planet and accounts for a third of all vegetable oils.
It’s found in processed foods — margarine, confectionery, ready meals, snacks — and also in cosmetics, cleaning products, animal feed and biofuels. Palm oil is cheap to produce, stable in processing and has a long shelf life.
Indonesia and Malaysia produce 90 per cent of the world’s palm oil and to facilitate the proliferation of oil palm plantations, Indonesia has destroyed 60 million acres of rain forest — equivalent in size to Britain — between 2001 and 2017 alone. Malaysia’s figure is 20 million acres in the last 20 years, with the destruction continuing apace.
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