The Impact on Coconut Vs. Palm Oil
Did you know that you can produce 4 metric tonnes (4000kg) of Palm oil from 1 hectare per year and you can only produce 553kg of Coconut oil per hectare per year?
This of course means that to replace palm oil with coconut oil you would need to destroy over 7 times more natural habitat.
In addition Palm oil contains 10 times more EFA’s (Essential Fatty Acids) than Coconut oil and over 3 times the amount of Omega 6.
There are of course added benefits from growing coconuts as it also yields coconut milk, coconut cream and water. Even charcoal can be produced from the husks. In addition, unlike palm, coconuts will grow well with other plants such as bananas and this is useful for smallholders.
So there is a place for Coconut but due to the high yield of oil, which is higher than any other commercially grown vegetable oil, it appears to be much better for our planet and our environment to use palm oil.
It must however be well managed RSPO palm oil. At present less than 20% of all palm is RSPO but this is changing and with the help of organisations like “Palm Done Right” improvements will come.
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