Heads up, folks. Sean Whyte, CEO of Nature Alert is on a new rampage.  Writing to news media in Malaysia on his one man crusade against palm oil, Mr. Whyte does not help his cause with his strange penchant for hyperbole.  In fact, so ingrained is his need for exaggeration that Mr. Whyte must be the undisputed environmental Crowned Prince of Hyperbole.

If Mr. Whyte is the self-appointed spokesman for the environmental movement, he cannot be doing the movement any good.

Mr. Whyte writes: “What's happening is that after years of freedom to log millions of hectares of rainforest and in the process of doing so wiping out tens of millions of wildlife forms, the palm oil industry is at last being held accountable for the undeniable death and destruction they have wreaked, relatively unchecked, until now.”  

It behooves one to ask just how the palm oil could be wiping out tens of millions of wildlife forms, given that the number of known species for ALL animals living on this planet other than arthropods is only about 250,000!  

Any doubt about Mr.Whyte’s congenital inclination for hyperbole is instantly dispelled when he warns that “some 20 years from now there could be little or no forest cover left in Malaysia and Indonesia.”

Perhaps, Mr. Whyte needs to be apprised of the fact that Malaysia has been planting palm oil for more than a hundred years and yet the country still retains forest cover of 56%. Yes, read that again.  100 years of palm oil cultivation and Malaysia still has 56% forest cover!

Is he even aware that Malaysia had already committed itself under the Rio Summit to have over 50 per cent of its land under forest cover.  This is more than double the forest cover prevailing in Mr. Whyte’s own home, the United Kingdom.

The reason for this is palm oil’s inherent productivity. The highest yielding of all oilseeds, palm oil enjoys a yield of 4-5 metric tons per hectare, close to ten times that of its nearest competitors such as soy, rapeseed and sunflower.  For this same reason, palm oil cultivation is so efficient in land use that it covers less than 1% of the total world agricultural area.

In the view of Deforestation Watch, if Mr.Whyte is truly concerned with environmental conservation, rather than calling palm oil “the most environmentally destructive industry in the world,” he should consider calling for palm oil to be planted in place of its competing crops (weather permitting) on account of its extreme efficiency in land use, since palm oil requires ten times less land to produce the same unit of edible oil!

The reality is this. If palm oil cultivation were curtailed or taken away altogether from the trade equation, the world would be scrambling for more oil which , in turn, would see ten times more land being opened up for other oilseed cultivation to fill the gap left by palm oil. In those circumstances then, Mr. Whyte's claims of environmental destruction may gain a degree of credibility and then perhaps, become a stark reality! THE END