*Photo: Prof Kehinde Yusuf*
In his 2003 article on “The Politics of Food”, in the journal American Scientist, Michael Taylor states: “The most central and pervasive social and economic system in the world is the food system – that vast web of human interdependencies through which the planet’s six billion people feed themselves. … And, like some other social systems, it is thoroughly intertwined with public policy and politics. Governments worldwide make decisions that profoundly affect the economics of food production and marketing, and that influence the quality and safety of food.”
In a 7 May, 2024 article titled “Imperialism: Its relevance for food systems”, published in The Developing Economics blog, Mirette Nunez also perceptively notes: “Colonizing, occupying, and dominating are blatant ways that imperialism effectively occurs in history. It has not changed significantly except that the people furthering their ‘expansion’ are not outrightly removing, killing, or taking resources from people; they now sign policies, laws, or rules, and then people follow this or follow it by force. … What people need to survive more than anything is food … To have influence or control over how it is produced and distributed, as well as who produces and distributes it, is a clear demonstration of the relevance of the concept of imperialism.”
Palm oil is of major significance in this regard. A World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) document, titled “8 things to know about palm oil”, notes that it’s an edible vegetable oil that comes from the fruit of oil palm trees, which are native to Africa but imported into South-East Asia just over 100 years ago as an ornamental tree crop, with Indonesia and Malaysia making up over 85% of global supply of the oil. WWF also notes that palm oil is extremely versatile and has many different properties and functions that make it quite useful, and that in Asian and African countries, palm oil is used widely as a cooking oil, just like sunflower or olive is used in the UK.
The document also notes: “Palm oil is in nearly everything – it’s in close to 50% of the packaged products we find in supermarkets, everything from pizza, doughnuts and chocolate, to deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste and lipstick. It’s also used in animal feed and as a biofuel in many parts of the world.” Moreover, the WWF document notes that, compared to other vegetable oils, the oil palm is a very efficient crop, able to produce high quantities of oil over small areas of land, almost all year round, making it an attractive crop for growers and smallholders, who can rely on the steady income that it provides.
Palm oil is also a major foreign exchange earner for some countries. According to Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, in his keynote address at the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) International Palm Oil Congress and Exhibition on 19 November, 2019, in Kuala Lumpur, “in 2018, palm oil and palm-based products contributed RM67.5 billion to the country’s export earnings and provided employment opportunities to more than 3 million people along its supply chain including more than half a million smallholders. Palm oil is now the largest traded vegetable oil in the world, surpassing other vegetable oils such as soya bean, rapeseed and sunflower oil. In 2018, a total of 72 million tonnes of palm oil was produced globally as compared to 56 million tonnes of soya bean oil and 25 million tonnes of rapeseed oil. Despite occupying only about 5 percent of the total land used by oil crops, oil palm contributes … about 32 percent of the world’s oils and fats production.”
In spite of these facts, in a 17 January, 2019 report titled “Dr M endorses palm oil in video to combat commodity’s detractors”, in Malay Mail, Danial Dzulkifly notes: “Last December, France’s National Assembly voted to end tax incentives for palm oil biodiesel by 2020, followed later that month by Norway’s parliament’s plan to ban biofuels with palm oil also by 2020. In 2017, the European Union Parliament had banned the use of palm oil in all European biofuels by [2030], citing environmental concerns.”
Reacting to the bans, at the 73rd UN General Assembly on 28 September, 2018, Dr. Mahathir Mohammad said that while the Western countries flood the markets of smaller nations with their own goods through all sorts of inequitable ‘free trade’ policies, “the simple products of the poor are subjected to clever barriers so that they cannot penetrate the market of the rich. Malaysian palm oil is labelled as dangerous to health and the estates are [said to be] destroying the habitat of animals. Food products of the rich declare that they are palm oil free. Now palm diesels are condemned because they are [said to be] decimating virgin jungles. These caring people forget that their boycott is depriving hundreds of thousands of people … jobs and a decent life.”
Dr. Mahathir Mohamad further notes, in his 2019 MPOB speech, that the negative publicity against the palm oil industry, by anti-palm oil campaigners and Western NGOs, was baseless and unjust, and that, “in reality, to produce palm oil is more efficient compared to other oils and seeds as it requires the least land area but yet produces the highest yield. Oil palm’s average yield of 4 tonnes of oil per hectare per year is 4 times higher than rapeseed, 5.4 times higher than sunflower and 8 times higher than soya bean. Therefore, a ban on palm oil would not stop deforestation, but instead will lead to more opening of land [for] intensive oilseed crops [cultivation] to keep up with the rising demand.” The ban was, as such, seen essentially as European protectionism.
Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who is himself a medical doctor, therefore joined the efforts to counter the propaganda against palm oil. In a 3-minute 17 January, 2019 video, as a part of the government’s “Love MY Palm Oil Campaign”, the Prime Minister said: “For a long, long time now, people have been consuming Malaysian palm oil. I do consume palm oil as the preferred oil when my cook prepares food for me. This palm oil was accused of having deleterious effects on consumers. … But the palm oil industry has submitted the oil for examination in several laboratories in America and they have found no evidence of any bad effect from the consumption of palm oil. Now, of course, the palm oil is accused of causing a lot of forest to be cleared in order to plant oil palms. But in Malaysia, we have been careful about preserving our forests. 50%-plus of the surface area of Malaysia is covered by forests. Of course, palm trees themselves are trees that absorb carbon dioxide. The main campaign against palm oil is because it competes with other vegetable oils and obviously in the competition, the competitors … try their level best to make palm oil rejected by the consumers.”
As a means of mitigating the effect of the Western assault on palm oil, the government was advised to persuade China to buy more of Malaysian palm oil. The proposal was based on the fact that as a 7 October, 2019 Asia-Palmoil.com report indicates, “palm oil makes up around 5.05 million tonnes or 58% of China’s edible oil imports. Of the total, Malaysia’s palm oil imports are around 1.92 million tonnes or 5% of China’s total edible oil consumption.” As recently as 26 September, 2023, DW.com, in an article titled, “Malaysia: Is boosting palm oil flow to China defeat for EU?”, states as follows: “Malaysia intends to double the quantity of palm oil it exports to China, in an effort to counterbalance the EU’s push to cut down on its own imports. … Investment deals between Malaysia and China to the tune of €3.9 billion ($4.1 billion) were inked earlier this month at the China-ASEAN Expo. Malaysia’s state-owned Sime Darby Oils International and China’s Guangxi Beibu Gulf International Port Group signed a memorandum of understanding for a €500 million trading and distribution center for refined palm oil in the Chinese city of Qinzhou, according to Japanese news outlet Nikkei Asia.”
DW.com further reports: “Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said during the expo that his country will double its palm oil exports to China to 500,000 tons annually within a few years. ‘This is the first time that China has asked for a big increase. … It will, he added, ‘undoubtedly secure the interests of smallholders and small-scale palm oil producers’ in Malaysia.” On the implication of the new deal with China, DW.com notes: “In addition, the EU’s reputation remains damaged by a policy that is “driven by protecting its own vegetable oils at the expense of Southeast Asian producers,” Welsh said, a reference to allegations that EU directives are merely intended to benefit Europe-produced biofuels such as rapeseed and sunflower oil. Because much of Indonesia’s palm oil sector is under Malaysian ownership, a shift by Malaysia towards Chinese markets would also likely affect palm oil producers in Indonesia.”
In this regard, DW.com quoted Frederick Kliem, a research fellow and lecturer at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore who admonished that “trade restrictions should be a last resort, applied very cautiously after all other avenues have been explored.” The realisation of this fact and the potentials of losing a huge and regionally important player may have accounted for the EU’s new conciliatory tone. This is reflected in the following report by DW.com: “‘The European Union remains a major consumer of palm oil globally,’ said Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee. ‘Considering the EU’s vast consumer base and its affluent middle class, it’s anticipated that this market will remain attractive to exporters,’ Lange added. ‘Both the EU and nations like Malaysia share this common vision. My dialogues with representatives from Malaysia and Indonesia have been extensive on this topic.’”
Meanwhile, the politics of palm oil continues as Malaysia is actively courting Egypt, with its estimated over 110 million people, as stated in a 7 February, 2024 report of Bernama.com, titled “Malaysia to work with Egypt to expand palm oil export to Africa – Johari.” Another report in the New Strait Times written by Diyana Isamudin on 17 June, 2024, titled “Invitation to set up palm oil hub”, stated: “Malaysian palm oil leaders are welcomed to establish a hub in the Suez Canal Economic Zone to tap on the free trade agreements that Egypt has signed with its neighbours, Egyptian ambassador to Malaysia Ragai Tawfik Said Nasr said.”
All of the foregoing shows how the dynamics of what Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad called a “simple product” in 2018 could have profound and enduring impact on efforts at food imperialism, measures to counter the deleterious dominance, and international relations in general.