Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) is the world's highest yielding oil crop, with approximately eight times higher

productivity than rapeseed and six times higher than soybean (Fig. 1(a)). Palm oil is extracted from the
fruit mesocarp, which is then fractionated into palm olein and stearin [2]. Palm olein isused infood
applications, especially as afeedstock for cooking oil, while palm stearin is mainly used in non-food and
oleochemicals production. Oil palm is widely grown in tropical countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia
with 47.6 million tonnes of palm oil (Ahmad, Zhang, Doherty, & O’Hara, 2019)

Is the palm oil industry a successful example of sustainable development? It would appear so. In
Malaysia, the pioneer and lea- der of the industry in terms of capital and technology, palm oil generated
twelve billion US Dollars in export earnings in 2014. Palm oil now accounts for a staggering 70% of
agricultural land use, and the relative affluence of Malaysian smallholders and the financial success of its
modern, agribusiness corporations are envied by many other countries from the South. Malaysia’s
neigh- bour, Indonesia, hopes to achieve similar development targets by copying its palm oil strategy. It
has now surpassed Malaysia in oil palm plantation area, crude palm oil (CPO) production and export
earnings. Palm oil sales made for 17.5 billion USD in 2014, making the sector the second largest export
earner after coal (Valois et al., 2019)

Reference List

Ahmad, F. B., Zhang, Z., Doherty, W. O. S., & O’Hara, I. M. (2019). The outlook of the production of
advanced fuels and chemicals from integrated oil palm biomass biorefinery. Renewable and
Sustainable Energy Reviews, 109(September 2017), 386–411.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2019.04.009

Pye, O. (2019). Commodifying sustainability: Development, nature and politics in the palm oil industry.
World Development, 121, 218–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.02.014

Valois, M., Tinôco, R., Chia, G., Vaz-de-Mello, F., Grossi, P., & Silva, F. (2019). Giant rhinoceros beetle
Golofa claviger (Linnaeus) (Coleoptera: Melolonthidae: Dynastini) is damaging North Brazilian oil
palm plantations. Revista Brasileira de Entomologia, 63(1), 6–8.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rbe.2018.11.003