Source: Grist
Please take a look at the article above from The Grist.
Below you will find my reaction to it's over simplified reporting. In reading this article from The Grist one can easily be outraged at palm oil, cookies, The Girl Scouts, or all of the above. However, it's once again, economics to blame. Well, economics and the global affects on agribusiness.
Palm oil is the problem? Girl scout cookies are the problem? Really?!?! An ingredient produced by the planet and little girls are to blame? C'mon; the growing practices are to blame. Look...I make products with sustainably grown/sourced and fair wage palm oil from a Columbian Co-op and have for a few years due to their bio-sphere positive agricultural practices. Never once did I say to myself that the ingredient is to blame or that little children were to blame. I just switched to a better, and more ethical producer.
Nature or nurture? It's not me. It's how I was raised.
Look; it's just plain bad reporting to say things like "palm oil, the No. 1 culprit behind deforestation in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and Malaysia." Palm oil is not an evil to stamp out. The GROWING PRACTICES are! Support the users and producers of ethically grown and bio-diverse palm oil. Don't just make statements, out of hand, that encourage consumers to blame a product. Go the extra step and tell them to look for ingredients and growing cooperatives that do not contribute to rain forest deforestation, invest in adult education, build evaporation awnings to protect valuable irrigation water, and protect animal habitats.
Look I understand it's easy to vilify and tear down a product like palm oil; but if you really understood how much good this product does in our daily lives; from common baked goods to Soaps and detergents, Candles, Cosmetics, manufacturing and transportation lubrication, biodiesel, glue, printing inks, textile industry just to mention a few.
In addition to oils extracted from the oil palm fruit, other parts of the tree can be used in industry. For example, leaf fibers and empty fruit bunches are used to produce chipboard and plywood. After plantations are cleared out, the trunks of old palms can be used to make furniture.
Look, I'm all for bringing the attention to problems a affecting change but oversimplifying and demonizing a great product from the earth like palm oil is not the way to do it.
Tell your readers to look for sustainably grown products and to support businesses that "get it". Tell you readers to vote with their dollars. Put down the candy and cookies made with deforestation palm oil. Sure, it's the cheapest. Pick up the products that may cost a little more due to organic (reduced yield) farming, vegan, fair wage or fair trade, carbon neutral, or chemical free (no parabens or petrochemicals or toxins that harm the grown water or bioculture and travel up through the food chain). Then email the Girl Scouts of America and tell them that you will buy more when they switch ingredients and that you are willing to pay for the extra cost. Sustainable agriculture practices, humanity, species and the planet are worth it.
