By Mohammad Imtiyaj Khan
In biochemistry, the terms fat and oil are used interchangeably for the same material, with a slight difference in their meanings: fat is more commonly used for the solid form in room temperature while oil is preferred for the liquid form. Edible oils are biochemically triglycerides. Fatty acids are building blocks of triglycerides. Palm oil is edible with a unique physicochemical property: it is a fat in room temperature (melting point is 39 °C as per the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India or FSSAI) because of its palmitin and stearin, which are triglycerides consisting of three palmitic acid and stearic acid molecules on a glycerol backbone, respectively. Both palmitic acid and stearic acid are long chain saturated fatty acids, meaning they are high in calorific value and comparatively unhealthy.
Palm oil can be used for preparation of hard and soft fractions to develop healthy oils. The hard fraction of palm oil called palm stearin liquefies completely above 60 °C. It contains more solid fat with triglycerides of a single saturated fatty acid (e.g. palmitin and stearin). The soft fraction called palmolein is liquid above 18 °C (as per the FSSAI), contains more nutraceuticals (pharmacoactive micronutrients like tocopherols, tocotrienols, carotenoids, etc), more unsaturated fatty acids (e.g. palmitoleic acid, oleic acid, linoleic acid, etc), and hence relatively healthier. Palm stearin is usually used for physical blending or interesterification (a lipase enzyme-catalysed reaction of blending oils/their fractions) with other oils to improve the melting point, whereas palmolein is used as a source of nutraceuticals in blending and interesterification.
Most oils available today for bakery, confectionery and other such applications are blended or interesterified. Apart from its use in blending or interesterification, as such palm oil is also required for consumption as edible oil. According to the EAT-Lancet commission report released in 2019, 25-30% of our diet should be oils/fats consisting of palm oil (or other oils) up to 6.8 grams per day and unsaturated fatty acids up to 40 grams per day. These requirements can also be obtained from our traditional edible oils like mustard oil, groundnut oil, soybean oil, coconut oil, sunflower oil, and others. Most of these edible oils comprise majorly unsaturated fatty acids.
What is bad about palm oil? Because of high levels of saturated fatty acids, palm oil and coconut oil are bad for health as they increase the level of bad cholesterol i.e., low-density lipoprotein. As a consequence, blood vessels may thicken and subsequently affect the blood flow causing serious problems. Portions of palm oil like stearin and palmitin are difficult to digest in the alimentary canal as the required temperature for complete melting of these hard fats is above the body temperature. These undigested fats get deposited along the intestinal lining and block the absorption of other nutrients through the lining. These health problems are worsened by the sedentary lifestyle and junk food-eating habit.
Palm oil being cheaper, many eateries use it or palmolein for deep-frying of poori, samosa, and other fast food items, which are popular Indian snacks. This habit in combination with the increasing non- vegetarian food consumption (as per the National Family Health Survey or NFHS 5, 2.3% and 8.4% increase in the non-vegetarian food consumption was observed among women and men, respectively, compared to NFHS 4) by the 15-48 age group is substantially increasing the saturated fat intake of Indians. Sedentary workers’ consumption of higher saturated fats from either oil (like palm oil) or non-veg items is bad for health.
What is ugly about palm oil is the politics around it. As palm oil is not a preferred edible oil in India, its production in India in the crude form (2.88 lakh tonnes in 2020-21 as revealed in the Rajya Sabha against the world production of 7.9 crore metric tonnes in 2022-23, of which 85-90% were contributed by Indonesia and Malaysia, according to the US department of Agriculture) should be sufficient for its various applications, including industrial uses as raw materials for different products. However, 59% of the total vegetable oil imports of India were palm oil, to the tune of 4.39 lakh tonnes in 2022-23, according to the Solvent Extractors’ Association. If the production and import are indicators of India’s palm oil demand, India needs not more than 6 lakh tonnes of the oil per year. At present, palm oil is relatively cheaper than most of the edible oils consumed traditionally in India. Irrespective of this, the central government is pushing for oil palm plantation under the National Mission for Edible Oils- Oil Palm to increase the crude palm oil production five-fold, i.e. 11 lakh tonnes, by 2025-26.
To achieve this target, in addition to Andhra Pradesh, which has more than 83% contribution to India’s palm oil production, new areas will be covered for oil palm plantation, including the Indo-Myanmar mega biodiversity hotspot covering the entire northeast India. This move will require clearing of forests and changing the land use pattern. Farmers, activists and some political parties have protested against the oil palm plantation in Assam. According to a reply in the State Legislative Assembly given by the Agriculture Minister, Atul Bora, on September 12, the total area identified for oil palm cultivation in the State is 3.75 lakh hectare.
As per the Oil Palm Mission Manipur (OPMM), the oil palm plantation drive in the State will cover six districts and a total area of 66,652 hectares, including 11,662 hectares in Churachandpur, which is the epicentre of the ongoing ethnic violence since May 3. Manipur is expected to witness an increase in the temperature by 1.7 °C by the end of the 21st century, according to a projection by the Manipur State Action Plan on Climate Change in 2013. Moreover, a research paper in Current Science published in 2018 on climate resilient agriculture in Manipur concluded from an analysis of various climate parameters from 1954 to 2014 that the rainfall in Manipur would rise, causing a decrease of 10% in crop yields by 2030.
These scientific studies suggest that any major changes in the land use and agri-horti practices will further worsen the impacts of climate change. However, in a workshop organised in June 2022, the consultant of OPMM was reported to have defended the oil palm plantation mission by claiming that the plantation would be done in the abandoned shifting cultivation lands, fallow lands and foothills.
The Kukis of Manipur have been practising jhum or shifting cultivation as part of their sustenance and it is intricately linked to their existence. Once a cultivation land is not productive enough, they move on to another area and clear the forest for cultivation. In the scheme of cultivation, there is nothing called abandoned jhum land as the farmers leave the land uncultivated for the natural rejuvenation of soil. After a certain period of time, they come back to the same land for cultivation again. If such temporarily uncultivated lands are used for oil palm plantation, there will obviously be a conflict with the farmers when they return to cultivate the land.
Even though jhum cultivation is a traditional practice of some tribes in northeast India, increasing population, decreasing land area for cultivation and the decrease in soil quality owing to the reduction in jhum cultivation cycle from more than 20 years in the past to merely 3-5 years more recently, have made it unworthy and detrimental to the environment. The situation is further worsened by the effects of global warming. Several attempts have been made in the past to find commercial crops as alternatives to jhum cultivation like pineapple, passion fruit and others, but it registered limited success in terms of self-sustenance of the farmers.
Therefore, planting only oil palm will not be in the interest of local farmers and their sustenance. In view of this, one of the causes of the ongoing clashes in Manipur between the Meiteis and the Kukis is possibly rooted in the Manipur government’s push for evicting them from forest land, while striving to cultivate oil palm in some of the jhum lands. The government’s drive to clear poppy cultivation, on the one hand, while pushing for oil palm plantation, on the other hand, appears to be a Faustian bargain.
(Mohammad Imtiyaj Khan teaches at Gauhati University. He can be contacted at [email protected]. The views are personal.)