New approaches to sustainable palm oil

The palm oil sector was widely blamed for the haze that plagued Southeast Asia earlier this year. Agus Purnomo, managing director for sustainability and stakeholder engagement, Golden Agri-Resources, outlines what the industry giant is doing to produce the crop more sustainably.

Palm oil is widely recognised as one of the world’s most important crops. We produce a valuable natural product; one that is subject to growing global demand and which benefits from yields per hectare that outperform any of our competitors, meaning that significantly less land is required to deliver the same yields as other three major oil producing crops: soya, rapeseed and sunflower.

As an industry we are well suited to all types of production, whether commercial or smallholder led, and this means that benefits can be widely shared.  Our industry has enriched millions of people and helped to build the economies of countries around the world. Palm oil production is a lifeline for an estimated 1.5million smallholder farmers in Indonesia, whose plantations account for 40 per cent of Indonesian palm oil production across 4.2million hectares of land1. Palm oil is found in countless daily essentials and has a hugely positive role in society.

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