Palm Oil is the Most Efficient Land Use
In 2019, to be precise two years ago the European Union had aggressively voiced a negative palm oil campaign. The peak occurred in March 2019 when the European Commission included palm oil as a high-risk commodity in the Delegated Act. Oil palm is thought to be the cause of deforestation. This assumption is judged by the amount of deforested forest land that has been replaced by oil palm trees. For this reason, the European Commission prohibits the use of palm oil as a fuel gradually until 2030.
The European Commission’s decision has clearly interrupted Indonesia and Malaysia, which are the two largest palm oil producing countries in the world. Asian Agri Director of Sustainability and Stakeholder Relations, Bernard Riedo, thinks that the European Union, which says that oil palm is the cause of deforestation, needs to be reviewed. This is because oil palm is actually more efficient in terms of land use than other commodities. According to him, oil palm is the most productive and efficient vegetable oil crop in terms of land use.
Based on Oil World 2018 data, palm oil is part of a global producer of vegetable oils such as sunflower, soybeans, cotton seeds and rapeseed. The total area of global vegetable oil producers is 290 hectares (ha) with a vegetable oil production figure of 221 million tons. Compared to other crops, oil palm is the most efficient plant in land use. Oil palm uses only 7 percent of the land. Meanwhile 43 percent of soybeans, 12 percent of cotton seeds, 11 percent of rapeseed, 9 percent of sunflower and the remaining 20 percent of other vegetable oil plants.
A number of national and international studies using Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) have proven that using palm oil as a fuel for diesel / diesel (biodiesel) will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 50-60 percent
Indonesia as one of the largest palm oil producing countries can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions using palm oil. Not only that, the results of research from the European Commission (2013) found that if palm oil biodiesel is produced from Palm Oil Mills with methane capture can increase the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The savings in greenhouse gas emissions through the use of biodiesel made from palm oil is higher than biodiesel made from other vegetable oils.
It would be extraordinary if Palm Oil, is not only the most efficient commodity in land use, but also plays an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Sumber: kumparan.com