The dark side of my morning coffee
We read in the papers that oil palm as a crop has caused the destruction of huge areas of tropical forest and associated considerable loss of biodiversity. We are right to be indignant about these losses. Yet, there is another problematic crop that is part of our daily life.
Every morning, as indeed this morning, I take the time to flick through the newspaper while having my breakfast and enjoying a cup of strong coffee. It is rare for a week to pass where I do not read of massive environmental destruction wrought by the expansion of oil palm agriculture. In the past two decades the oil palm, native to West Africa, has been planted over thousands of hectares of formerly forested land across Southeast Asia and Latin America, thus diminishing some of the most biodiverse habitats on the planet. In its wake we are left with images of orphaned orang-utans and burned forest that instil indignation at the wanton destruction and frustration with our powerlessness to do anything about it.
The omnipresence of palm oil
I put the newspaper down to make myself another coffee, but as I do so I begin to wonder whether our indignation is a little misguided. Perhaps we ought to view oil palm differently. After all, palm oil –more prosaically named ‘vegetable oil’ in a list of ingredients – is found in almost half of all products in the average supermarket. These include margarine, cereals, crisps, sweets, biscuits and cakes, pet foods, soaps and shampoos, washing powders and cosmetics. There is a good chance that every day each one of us uses several products that contain palm oil. In all likelihood palm oil was in the shampoo I used this morning, in the cereal I had for breakfast, and in the snack that my kids took with them to school. Quite apart from our direct consumption of palm oil, it is also a component of the feed to fatten the animals we eat and as fuel in the cars we drive.
We should, perhaps, also contemplate the affordability of palm oil as a vegetable oil that reduces the household costs of many poverty-stricken families in the tropics. Without it access to cooking oil for many tropical rural households would be curtailed, and the price of food products would likely be higher than is currently the case. It has become an important and affordable element that eases the strain on the balance-sheets of many poor rural households in developing countries.
Perhaps we also ought to consider that oil palm has about six times the yield of other oil crops, and so we need far less land to produce the same amount of oil. Vegetable oils are, by and large, substitutable. Thus by exchanging soya, another environmentally destructive tropical crop, for palm oil we might greatly reduce the amount of natural land lost to agriculture.
So while we demonise oil palm for its undoubtedly high environmental impact, let us also shoulder some of the blame ourselves as avid consumers, and recognise too that palm oil is a basic ingredient for a great many products we use daily, and an affordable cooking oil for poor households globally.
Environmental impact of a daily habit
Moreover, as I finish my second coffee of the day (and I have not even left the house yet) I remember that coffee, like oil palm, is a tropical crop that is planted widely in some of the most biodiverse areas of the planet. The rapid expansion of coffee plantations in Brazil, Colombia and Vietnam has, like oil palm, caused the destruction of forested habitats. Globally, oil palm occupies more land than coffee, but not much more: 164,000 km2 for oil palm (about four times the size of Switzerland) against 105,000 km2 for coffee. Of course, it is true that coffee can be, and often is, produced in diverse agroforests (when coffee is grown under shade trees) where biodiversity benefits are substantial, even if still a poor substitute for natural forest. But coffee is also very often planted as an intensive crop under non-native tree cover or even no tree cover at all. In this sense it is little different to oil palm in terms of its environmental and biodiversity impacts.
Yet I do not castigate coffee for the damage it wreaks on the environment. Perhaps I should. After all, coffee is a luxury product. No doubt many readers feel they have a need for (even dependency on) coffee, but in truth it is a product that we can do without. Unlike palm oil, it does not find its way into a great number of basic food products that fill our weekly shopping basket. Neither is coffee, unlike palm oil, a necessary and affordable commodity for poor households in the developing world. It does not substitute another product (except perhaps tea!), and is therefore an additional environmental burden. I therefore contend that we are hypocritical to demonise oil palm which, knowingly or otherwise, we consume in a great variety of near-essential products and foodstuffs, while portraying coffee as an environmentally benign product when in fact its consumption is not even necessary in the first place.
As I leave the house on my way to work I reflect that both coffee and oil palm are global commodities that provide substantial employment opportunities to poor tropical farmers and labourers. Both cause the loss of natural forest lands that are rich in biodiversity, but the impressive yields of oil palm probably spare much land from agricultural conversion. But above all, coffee, unlike palm oil, is a non-essential luxury – we do not need it.
So, by all means let’s demand and campaign for the sustainable production of both coffee and palm oil, but perhaps we should also simply drink less coffee.