Peak vegetable oil

But banning new production in the tropics would only shift the problem elsewhere as consumer demand for vegetable oil soars, the report cautioned."When you consider the disastrous impacts of palm oil on biodiversity from a global perspective, there are no simple solutions," said IUCN Director General Inger Andersen."Half the world's population uses palm oil in food, and if we ban or boycott it, other more land-hungry oils will likely take its place."Rapeseed, soy and sunflowers require up to nine times as much land to produce an equivalent amount of oil.All told, 193 animals and plants threatened with extinction on the IUCN's Red List of endangered species were found to have been harmed by the cash crop.Monoculture palm oil plantations sustain only a small fraction of the plant and animal life found in the tropical forests they supplant.In Borneo—the world's largest palm oil producing region, with 8.3 million hectares planted at of 2016—half the rainforests lost from 2005 to 2015 were destroyed by palm oil development.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-palm-oil-decimating-wildlife-solutions.html#jCp