We've been watching Our Planet and something that got me thinking was the view of the palm oil plantations which are taking over the rainforests. You may have seen campaigns against buying products with palm oil to discourage the growing of these trees at such commercial levels and orangutans are often cited as the reason why. Borneo, where most of them live, has had half of their jungle cleared and as a result of this, around 100,000 them have been lost in the past 20 years.
Our Planet is suggesting a move to sustainable palm oil from growers who are using previously cleared land, which has been sitting unused, and those who are taking steps to regrow the jungle around the plantations. This is certainly a step in the right direction, but will it work and is it enough?
A while ago I read through a discussion on Facebook, which not too surprisingly degenerated into a slanging match. It started along the lines of it being the fault of us people that the jungles are being cleared for palm oil plantations, because we create demand for the oil. Then an expat who lives in these areas said that it would make no difference blaming ourselves, because it's the greed of the companies which drives them to clear the land to grow products in demand. His belief was that they would still do this, even if we stopped buying palm oil products, because these companies want to grab as much land as possible.
The proposal that Our Planet makes is that there are swathes of land around the world, previously cleared then abandoned, which could be used to grow palm oil plantations. The theory sounds great, but when you want more land to grow in, are you going to try and extend the lands you have right where you are, or go somewhere else? It seems like a no brainer to me. If I were a land owner, then I'd want to extend right where I am. I know the growing conditions and I don't need to travel. Those living near the vacant land, may have no interest in farming, or if they do it may be for another product entirely.
Often, the demand for products aren't even what can necessarily be grown just anywhere, so we get a situation where they're trying to imitate a climate with huge amounts of outside input, to grow something that doesn't naturally grow there. People are saying we should grow native plants, but it often doesn't get far because there is little to no market for native plants. It's not that they're entirely useless, it's more that we just don't really know how to use them.
The fact is that the reason that things are done in such a destructive way is down to profit. So perhaps we need to discover how to profit even more from doing things in a less harmful way. We need more trees, but ideally they should also be native trees. So can we create a market for native foods?
I recently read an article in Grass Roots Magazine on a local couple who have started a business growing and producing native Australian super foods. In a state where water is in such short supply, it makes so much sense to be growing native foods. South Australia had so much land cleared when the settlers first arrived and that land is now no good for growing the usual crops. Farmers are struggling to get the water they need for conventional crops, so if the market for native foods can grow, then surely that's the way to go.
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I would love to see more Indigenous ingredients and native plants turned into household named products. I know there is are smaller groups of people trying to get this off of the ground, and we wouldn't need as much palm oil. But it really needs some advertising dollars and education campaigns in order to get people to try these things and change their minds.
Getting people to try these things is certainly the tough part!
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you know in my own opinion, it's hard to answer correctly this kind of proposal about palm tree plantation. Because we already know many can benifits for this. It will help many people have work and also it will help the oil need's to everyone. It's hard for me to give an opinion because I have my own.
but please don't take my word's in an offensive way.
The reason of this destroying our nature are the rich people. They became so greedy, they knew that people want's to have more money. They sacrificed humanity for their own. The buyer or us the user, we use resources abundantly even though we don't need much.
But actually no one has to blame alone for this. It's all of us, if we limit ourselves by using resources the big companies won't keep on supplying bigger amount of resources.
that's my insight, I hope I'm making sense for this. hehe
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There is never a simple answer. What benefits one can harm another.
I recently read something which pointed out that with the reforestation projects we have happening, the overall global tree coverage had increased in recent years. It would be interesting to know how much of that is monoculture. With the palm oil plantations, the jungle had been replaced with trees, still, but biodiversity has been lost.
I believe multiple approaches are the best solution to most things.
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It is profitable.
Not really. It is the fact that profiteers have corrupted institutions to offshore costs while concentrating profits in their wallets. It is corruption that enables misdevelopment, not economics itself. Institutions are used as weapons by sociopaths incapable of healthy socialization against free people, and normal people are not capable of even imagining the broken minds that scheme to sacrifice far more valuable things to financial gain, and the power that provides to megalomaniacal sociopaths. Normal people don't worship themselves and therefore don't even grasp the need to protect themselves, society, and the world from such insanity.
As decentralization proceeds, centralization declines. Across all industry decentralization is the cutting edge of technological advance, and the more advanced technology is, the faster it develops and disseminates. Tech always increases the power of individuals versus the power of institutions, and also does so more the more advanced it is. The laws of physics are the source of technology, and corrupt institutions cannot ban, pass, or amend the laws of physics.
As corrupt institutional power declines, just and free society becomes more powerful every day. The only thing that can prevent the eventual nullification of institutional power is our extinction. If we but avoid war, all we have to do is continue to adopt personally necesssary means of production as they become nominally developed to meet our needs, until we can just ignore psychopaths until they go away.
The natural environment is the most profitable possession of natural persons. Legal persons, inhuman and inhumane, seek to profit by it's scarcity. As we end that inhumanity via decentralization, we begin to restore that most profitable possession of humanity: our natural world.
Hey, you appear to have lost your gremlin!
Much of what you say is a bit far our there for many. Still, I think it's worth planting the seeds for ideas which have people looking at doing things a different way.
The future is happening today. To see it coming all we have to do is look. Only those that look will see, and the rest will follow those that have seen the way when the time comes. While we are right to lament the terrible desecration of our blessed Earth today, I am confident we will create worlds of wonder beyond number across the universe, and then we will rejoice at the abundance and fecundity of that sacred life we have well served.
Profiteers concerned only with their own benefit have sought to indoctrinate us from birth to know only how to serve them. That we question what we are told demonstrates that we will learn the truth in time, and that technology is enabling individuals to create every good thing able to improve our quality of life proves that overlords are obsolete. In time vampires will no longer parasitize good people, and we will undertake to first heal our world, and then to bless with abundance and fecundity the life we depend on with our every endeavor.
I'm a passionate boycotter of palm oil! Urgh. But I REALLY LIKED your question about native forest and native, wild foods possibly becoming profitable.
Highlighted in the @ecotrain Nuggets post this morning.
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Thank you for the highlight.
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The question is, whether everything has to be provitabel.
Many plants have very good qualities, although they do not make a profit from an economic point of view.
The beauty of a flower,
the fine scent of plants,
the fresh air of a forest,
the varied colours of shrubs,
the wonderful appearance of a landscape,
gives nature an invaluable value.
Thank you for your interesting article.
Best regards.
For us, things may not have to be profitable, but for many, money and profits is the driving force behind all that they do. It's hard to function in the system we have today without money. We can preach all we want that the best things in life are free, but its not going to stop companies from wanting to profit. So I see the only way to change them from a path of profiting from destruction is to find potential profit in something which benefits instead.
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we are living in the age of global convergence . what is local is also what is global. it isn't what is global today once a mere local? what and who is to prevent what you call local from proliferating and metastasizing in to a global fad and global delicatessen in time? and when and if that happens what is to prevent it from large-scale farming and the land grab you mentioned to grow and overgrow to cope up with the prevailing demand? perhaps the answer lies in technology scaleable to demand and not dependent on cleared land mass, but as there are tale tale signs in vertical farming and controlled environment farming which could possibly enable humanity to leave the natural jungle to the wild and restrain itself with in the confines of the concrete jungle of its own making .
Some very good thoughts and points. I'm most certainly intrigued by the idea of expanding further into urban gardening so that we're removing ourselves much more from interference in the natural environment. I've seen some brilliant ventures on that front. A rooftop garden in the city which provides much of the plant foods for a nearby restaurant.
I can't imagine being completely confined from nature, however. That would be heart breaking.
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In many places of the world, small pockets where the wilds remain, they are being burned down by locals paid to do so by people whom don't even live in the lands 'óut of site out of mind'....and the world is losing great forests which took a thousand years+ to establish...to be replaced with trees and crops which wreck the land and grow in just a year. The whole thing sux!
Palm oil is a bit like corn syrup - they shove it in everything as a filler, as a consumer avoiding these things is difficult, but very possible (the best way is to make your own food, sauces and drinks - so you don't even have to trust the label then).
Don't crap in your own backyard, pay others so you can crap in theirs instead! Out of sight and mind indeed. This is why in many ways we could do with localising.
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