Latin American Oil Palm Mostly Replaces Pasture

(IOP Environmental Research Web) Oil-palm plantations in Latin America are mostly replacing cattle pasture and other previously intervened lands rather than forests, a study by scientists in Puerto Rico has found.

The research – which also revealed that most exported oil palm stays within the region – suggests that Latin America is a "major opportunity" for the sustainable palm-oil sector, according to the scientists.

"The oil-palm industry has faced enormous scrutiny because of destructive practices in Asia," said Paul Furumo of the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras. "Our study reveals a different narrative of oil-palm expansion in Latin America, one in which cattle pastures and other previously intervened lands are the most significant source of new plantings instead of forests."

To understand how to influence the development of oil-palm plantations, says Furumo, it is important to understand the current drivers, including far-reaching market forces. For that reason Furumo and his colleague Mitchell Aide, also of the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras, investigated where Latin American oil-palm plantations have been created, and whereabouts in the world the generated palm oil is flowing.

Furumo and Aide began with images taken from NASA's pair of MODIS satellites, and trained a piece of computer software to recognize different types of land cover – forest, cattle pasture, oil-palm plantation, urban areas, and so on – for 10 countries in Latin America. They then used another piece of software to identify clusters of pixels that represented commercial-scale oil-palm plantations of greater than 50 hectares, and to remove false detections.

The researchers found that nearly four-fifths of oil-palm plantations replaced previously intervened land, mostly cattle pasture; just 21% came from previously woody vegetation such as forests. An analysis of trade databases showed that Latin American countries were net exporters of palm oil. But to Furumo and Aide's surprise, 70% of the exports stayed in the region, going to Mexico in particular. Another surprise was that many of the oil-palm plantations in smaller countries were "quite old", said Furumo. "The palm-oil issue is thought of as a recent phenomenon, largely due to its recent rapid expansion, but commercial production of this crop has been going on in the region for over 50 years," he added.

Though not as good as forests, palm-oil plantations are thought to be better than pasture when it comes to biodiversity and carbon storage. READ MORE