What the thing is
Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the reddish mesocarp of the African oil palm fruit.
It is used in food manufacturing, in beauty products and as biofuel. Palm oil is easier to keep stable, in flavor and consistency, in ultra-processed foods, so manufacturers often favor it. Because it is highly saturated it is solid at room temperature in temperate regions, which makes it a cheap substitute for butter or hydrogenated vegetable oils in pastry dough and baked goods. Crude red palm oil, which gets its color from carotenes, is a traditional cooking oil in West Africa and appears in dishes such as egusi soup and okra soup.
Where it came from
Humans used oil palms in West and Central Africa for 5,000 years. Archaeologists found palm oil residue in a 3,000 BCE tomb at Abydos.
British traders later sought it as an industrial lubricant for machinery during the Industrial Revolution, and it formed the basis of soaps such as Lever Brothers’ Sunlight and the American Palmolive brand. By around 1870 it was the primary export of some West African countries, often under oppressive labor practices, until cocoa overtook it in the 1880s.
What it gets right
Palm oil is land- and water-efficient. It delivers more oil per hectare than any other oil crop.
Palm covers only 5% of the world’s vegetable oil farmland but produces 38% of the supply. In 2016 palm farms produced around 4.17 metric tons of oil per hectare, against 0.56 for sunflower, 0.39 for soybean and 0.16 for peanut. A 2018 study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature concluded that palm oil is “here to stay” for this reason, and argued that replacing it would need more agricultural land. The IUCN advocates better practice, including stopping plantations from expanding into forest.
What it gets wrong
Its production drives deforestation that causes more biodiversity loss than switching to alternative oils would.
Forests have been cleared in parts of Indonesia and Malaysia for oil-palm monoculture, and the Sumatran orangutan is listed as critically endangered because of habitat loss from palm oil cultivation. Slash-and-burn is still used to create plantations: from January to September 2019, 857,000 hectares were burned in Indonesia, more than a quarter of it peatland.
The social record is mixed. Production provides jobs and has been shown to improve infrastructure and help reduce poverty, but journalists and NGO researchers have reported violations of indigenous land rights in fast-growing regions, and in 2017 there were over 650 land disputes between plantations and indigenous landowners in Indonesia. On health, a 2017 American Heart Association advisory named palm oil among the foods supplying saturated fat that raises LDL cholesterol, while a 2019 meta-analysis found no association between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular disease.
Why it matters now
It supplies 36% of global vegetable oils, with Indonesia producing 60% of it in 2022—and its environmental trade-offs are unresolved.
Biodiesel is a large part of Europe’s demand. As of 2018, one-half of Europe’s palm oil imports were used for biodiesel, and Indonesia’s government has estimated it would need roughly 15 million hectares of oil palm plantations to move to 100% palm oil biodiesel. Palm oil is one of seven commodities covered by the EU’s 2023 Regulation on Deforestation-free products. Supply is also fragile: in 2022 Indonesia banned palm oil exports during the food crisis, and, together with a reduced harvest in Malaysia, global prices rose sharply. Indonesia reopened trading on 23 May 2022, hoping to balance supplies.
Is it worth your time
Yes—if you care about food systems, land use, or the gap between efficiency claims and ecological harm.
