Why has palm oil suddenly developed in recent decades
Why has palm oil suddenly developed in recent decades?
In recent decades, palm oil has been put under magic, quickly penetrating into the life of the earth. According to relevant statistics, each person uses 8 kilograms of palm oil per year, which has surpassed soybean oil and rapeseed oil to become the world's largest production and consumption of the "invisible oil king".
Palm oil is good and cheap
Palm oil is used to replace unhealthy trans fats, and as Asian countries such as India become richer and richer and richer, many famous brands use it to make food and commodities.
Palm oil was widely used starting in the food processing industry.
In the 1960s, scientists began warning that the high saturated fat content of butter could increase the risk of heart disease. Food manufacturers, including Unilever (a multinational consumer goods company in Britain and the Netherlands), are replacing it with margarine made from vegetable oils.
By the early 1990s, however, producing margarine required hydrogenation, thus making a trans-fat —— that was even less healthy than saturated fat.
In 1994, a Unilever factory manager named Gerrit van Duijn removed the hydrogenated oil and replaced it with a trans-fat-free ingredient.
Finally, there is only one choice: palm oil / palm kernel oil- -fruit or seeds extracted from the oil palm. It also contains less saturated fat than butter.
Today, more than two-thirds of the palm oil enters the food market. During the 20 years between 1995 and 2015, the EU consumption of palm oil has more than tripled.
Palm oil has its versatility
Unlike other oils, the magic of palm oil is "fickle", can be "lifted" (crystallization separation) into solids (stear) and liquid (oil) with different melting points, versatility becomes a huge advantage of palm oil.
Not only are food-processing companies discovering this feature, but industries such as personal care products and transportation fuels are also starting to substitute it for other oils. Initially, mainly because of the environmental friendliness of palm oil.
Later, because of the change of consumption habits, becoming rid of animal products became a trend. While palm oil and palm kernel oil contain the same fat type as butter, it can be replaced extensively and perfectly.
Nowadays, 70% of personal care products such as soap, shampoos, lotions and cosmetics contain one or more palm oil derivatives.
As a biofuel, palm oil performs as well as soybean oil, vegetable oil and others, but it has a big advantage over these competitors: price.
Half of the EU currently imports palm oil that is used for biofuels.
Oil palm is currently the highest productive oil crop in the world
The economic life of oil palm is 25 to 30 years. Once it enters the full fruit period, oil can be picked and squeezed all the year round. 4 tons of oil per hectare is equivalent to more than 500 jin of oil per mu, with an extremely high yield. Peanuts have the highest conventional oil yield, averaging more than 100 jin per mu; the least land that palm oil takes up for the same oil harvest.
In 1981, the emergence of new pollination techniques led to surging palm oil production, with an explosion in land used in oil palm plantations.
Policies to promote palm oil development
Also contributing to the change are policy makers. In 1961, Malaysia launched a plan to promote palm exports as a means of poverty reduction, encouraging private companies to convert old rubber gardens and old coconut gardens to grow oil palm.
In 1968, the government provided a series of tax cuts for palm oil producers, and the industry invested heavily in palm fruit pressing; in the early 1970s, the extraction technology expanded palm oil in food and other fields.
In the 1970s, Indonesia was financed by loans from the International Monetary Fund, ABN Amro and other institutions, and the palm plantations expanded rapidly.
Since the late 1970s, the global consumption of palm oil and palm kernel oil has increased rapidly from about 4 million tons to about 70 million tons; the total demand is expected to exceed 20 0 million tons in 2050.
