The report on oil palm compiled for the 2007 Paris International Agricultural Fair
All you need to know about oil palm
What is CIRAD doing?
With ten million hectares of plantings in the intertropical world, exceptional oil yields and a consistently dynamic production chain, oil palm has substantial assets to help it respond to the main development challenges, against a backdrop of an oils and fats shortage in the South. For several years now, unprecedented pressure has been pushing production systems to pay greater heed to environmental issues, but increasing oil prices are now favouring the use of palm oil as a biofuel, hence there are major risks of eroding the rich biodiversity found in certain tropical countries.
The commodity chain faces many challenges that raise new issues for research:
- how can palm oil production systems be intensified at existing plantations, to avoid their extension as far as possible, and with minimum environmental impact?
- which criteria should be applied when choosing new planting sites, to preserve zones of rich biodiversity as much as possible?
- how can we make sound scientific judgements about the effects of different oils and fats on human health, to pur an end to a consumer debate that has been going on for more than 20 years?
In this context, CIRAD is working closely with private- and public-sector partners, with several aims: sustainable oil palm cultivation that respects biodiversity; planting material improvement to produce high-yielding, lethal disease-resistant palms; development of agroenvironmental indicators; and support of smallholders, who do not generally join forces with each other.
CIRAD's main lines of oil palm research are described in this section.