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Time to Pause Converting Healthy Palm Oil Into Biodiesel, Prioritise on Health and Wellness, Not Waste Them on Fuel For Motor Vehicles.
By Mihar Dias
(C) Copyright April 2022
It’s hard for a layman to understand the logic behind the conversion of perfectly good healthy palm oil which is exceptionally great for human consumption, into biodiesel to be wasted on motor vehicles. Besides, there is a shortage of edible cooking oil yet another compelling reason why we should focus on food and not fuel.
With the war on in Europe, Ukraine had ceased supplying the world with their sunflower oil because the whole industry is in complete chaos since the Russian invasion.
Russia is the second-largest producer of sunflower oil after Ukraine had imposed an export quota to cater for its domestic consumption. European countries and others dependent on sunflower oil are crying out for help.
To make matters worse, Indonesia had decided to follow suit in the footsteps of the Russians by giving greater priority to its people.
Early in April, university students demonstrated against President Joko Widodo over a widespread shortage of cooking oil in a nation dubbed as the world’s largest producer of palm oil.
Soon after that nationwide demonstration which called upon Jokowi to address the cooking oil issue and quit after his second term, Indonesia slapped an export ban on palm oil. Jokowi said it was just a pause not a permanent ban of eonort until conditions in Indonesia returned to normal.
In any case, these two events now create a serious shortage of edible oils on the world market.
However, Malaysia as the second-largest producer of palm oil has since stepped forward to make up for the shortage.
The Minister of Plantation Industry and Commodities announced Malaysia is confident it will be able to fulfil the global demand for palm oil.
The Director-General of the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) Dr Ahmad Parveez Ghulam Kadir told Reuters echoed her statement. He said that it was “necessary for countries to ensure the availability of oils and fats and that they are channelled for food and perhaps temporarily stop or lessen their biodiesel mandates”.
Palm oil, the cheapest and most widely consumed edible oil, is also used as biodiesel feedstock. That might put some with palm oil stock in a dilemma. The price of edible has risen, and o does fossil fuels.
These producers have a choice to make. Thus the subtle message by the DG of MPOB calls upon industry players to temporarily lessen the production of biodiesel.
For those not in the biodiesel business, we tend to side with the health and wellness benefits of palm oil.
We believe that palm oil is rich in Vitamins E (Tocotrienols) Vitamin A and other side benefits for health and wellness, ought to be exclusively reserved for humans as a priority rather than wasted for the production of biodiesel which is meant to be burned away adding more pollution to an already polluted world.
Perhaps pausing or eventually banning its conversion into biodiesel totally, will not only ease the current shortage of edible oil worldwide but will likely help safeguard future generations from more pollution.
If we were to burn fewer fuels now, we shall be able to help them inherit a less polluted environment in the future.
Mihar Dias is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
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