Cattle Pastures and Other Degraded Lands Become New Oil Palm Plantations
(Phys.Org) A new study published last week in the journal Environmental Research Letters by researchers at the University of Puerto Rico offers the first regional look at lands being converted to palm oil plantations in Latin America. Palm oil is a primary ingredient in processed foods, soaps, cosmetics, and biofuel. Growth of the palm oil industry has caused widespread deforestation in Southeast Asia, a concern among conservationists, the private sector, and consumers.
In Latin America, the agricultural area planted with palm oil has doubled in the last decade, and this new study shows that most palm oil plantations are being established on previously cleared lands, particularly cattle pastures. If palm oil continues to replace pastures instead of forests, the region may have a strong advantage for sustainable palm oil production.
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“Sustainable palm oil production is complex, but begins with land use changes during planting. When forests are cut down, it is a long-term loss of both species and communities, but intensifying production on previously degraded lands may create a huge opportunity for conservation in this sector,” said (Paul R.) Furumo, a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Environmental Science of the University of Puerto Rico.
A previous global-scale remote sensing study had suggested a less pronounced role for forest conversion to palm oil in Latin America, but the authors identified the specific land uses being converted to palm oil. Using a custom web application called Landmapper, the researchers integrated MODIS satellite imagery with very high resolution Google Earth images to map palm oil plantations in 2014. They mapped over a half-million hectares of palm oil in 10 different countries throughout the region, the equivalent to more than half of the total FAO reported area for Latin America. They visualized these polygons in Google Earth to look back in time and see what the most recent land cover was before conversion to palm oil.
The results indicate the outsized role that cattle pastures play in the development of palm oil agriculture in Latin America—nearly 60 percent of expansion occurred on these lands.
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The study also shows that most palm oil produced in Latin America is consumed in the region, instead of being exported to distant markets like Europe. There is a strong internal demand for palm oil in the region and the study suggests that this is in part driven by the surge of recent domestic biofuel targets.
Colombia, for example, the leading palm oil producer in Latin America and fourth largest in the world, has a national 10 percent biodiesel blend (B10). This target is fulfilled completely by domestic production, which accounts for about half of national palm oil production. Planting energy crops on previously degraded lands may validate biofuel development in the region, avoiding commonly cited issues of carbon and biodiversity loss. READ MORE Abstract (Environmental Research Letters)
