Scan barcode
Reviews
Planet Palm: How Palm Oil Ended Up in Everything--And Endangered the World by Jocelyn C. Zuckerman
abbyfrelier's review
4.0
However bad I knew Palm Oil was going into this it is much much worse. This book is a steady guide through the history and the industry today. Heartbreaking and infuriating.
laurenkd89's review
4.0
This is an excellent, comprehensive piece of reporting on one of the world's biggest problems: palm oil. Many environmentally-conscious consumers know about this evil crop, including how it has led to or been the cause of:
• massive (often illegal) deforestation in the world's most carbon-rich and biodiverse places,
• full or near extinction of hundreds of species that depend on these deforested habitats,
• huge releases of the CO2 that these high carbon stock rainforests capture and sequester, thus being a significant driver of climate change,
• eradication, exploitation, and/or displacement of indigenous peoples,
• despicable human rights violations from child labor to modern-day slavery to toxic agrochemical exposure,
• and many negative health outcomes including obesity and heart disease in countries like India and Mexico that sell processed foods loaded with the stuff.
So with all of these amazing things about palm oil easily accessible from a quick Google search, to borrow a phrase from John Oliver, why is it still a thing? Zuckerman explains why in many reasons, not least of which is the fact that our world - from Indian supermarkets to your own home - is dependent on and addicted to palm oil. You'll be hard pressed to find a home, even one of the most eco-conscious, free of the substance in one form or another, from Palmolive to L'Oreal cosmetics to Nutella to fried and packaged foods.
Zuckerman traces the history of palm oil, from when it was a nutritious and healthful Bahian food to when it entered the European commodity trade and led to many human rights abuses in its labor-intensive sourcing to when Europeans started massively clearing tropical rainforests and starting plantations of their own (only in the early 19th century). You'll note characters (really, villains) whose names are still around today: William Lever of Unilever fame, who put the stuff in his soap, and Pietro Ferrero of Nutella fame, who started using palm oil to give Nutella that creaminess that it's known for. They were not good guys in the race to own the palm oil supply chain.
Each chapter in this book dives deep into the issues I bulleted above, with Zuckerman going on-the-ground as much as possible to get firsthand accounts from workers, smallholder farmers, poachers (yes, poachers!), environmental activists, palm oil barons, government officials, etc. She travels to remote areas in these (formerly) biodiversity zones and sees the destruction that industrial-scale palm oil has wreaked on the most beautiful and sacred parts of the world. It's no secret that trying to investigate and uncover bad things about the palm oil industry puts a target on your back - palm oil is money, and there's a LOT of it in this industry - so I applaud Zuckerman's real reporting efforts, rather than just doing all her research from the desktop.
I work in the agriculture industry, and I thought I knew a decent amount about the horrors of industrial agriculture, especially for commodities like palm oil, cattle, rubber, soy, etc. that have and continue to cause massive deforestation. But this taught me so much that I didn't know in a relatively short book - including and especially all of the health and nutrition concerns related to palm oil, and how they are tied to socioeconomic disadvantage, both on a personal and geographical scale.
Although Zuckerman tries to end the book on some hopeful notes - promising partnerships and agreements, NGO watchdog groups that monitor for deforestation in almost real time, and our capacity to change what we thought would never change - you are still left with a sense of dread at the scale, intensity, difficulty to control, and most importantly, money behind this problem. I truly hope things will change, especially as the knowledge we have about this industry grows. The first step, at least, is consumer awareness.
Thank you to the publisher for the ARC via Netgalley!
• massive (often illegal) deforestation in the world's most carbon-rich and biodiverse places,
• full or near extinction of hundreds of species that depend on these deforested habitats,
• huge releases of the CO2 that these high carbon stock rainforests capture and sequester, thus being a significant driver of climate change,
• eradication, exploitation, and/or displacement of indigenous peoples,
• despicable human rights violations from child labor to modern-day slavery to toxic agrochemical exposure,
• and many negative health outcomes including obesity and heart disease in countries like India and Mexico that sell processed foods loaded with the stuff.
So with all of these amazing things about palm oil easily accessible from a quick Google search, to borrow a phrase from John Oliver, why is it still a thing? Zuckerman explains why in many reasons, not least of which is the fact that our world - from Indian supermarkets to your own home - is dependent on and addicted to palm oil. You'll be hard pressed to find a home, even one of the most eco-conscious, free of the substance in one form or another, from Palmolive to L'Oreal cosmetics to Nutella to fried and packaged foods.
Zuckerman traces the history of palm oil, from when it was a nutritious and healthful Bahian food to when it entered the European commodity trade and led to many human rights abuses in its labor-intensive sourcing to when Europeans started massively clearing tropical rainforests and starting plantations of their own (only in the early 19th century). You'll note characters (really, villains) whose names are still around today: William Lever of Unilever fame, who put the stuff in his soap, and Pietro Ferrero of Nutella fame, who started using palm oil to give Nutella that creaminess that it's known for. They were not good guys in the race to own the palm oil supply chain.
Each chapter in this book dives deep into the issues I bulleted above, with Zuckerman going on-the-ground as much as possible to get firsthand accounts from workers, smallholder farmers, poachers (yes, poachers!), environmental activists, palm oil barons, government officials, etc. She travels to remote areas in these (formerly) biodiversity zones and sees the destruction that industrial-scale palm oil has wreaked on the most beautiful and sacred parts of the world. It's no secret that trying to investigate and uncover bad things about the palm oil industry puts a target on your back - palm oil is money, and there's a LOT of it in this industry - so I applaud Zuckerman's real reporting efforts, rather than just doing all her research from the desktop.
I work in the agriculture industry, and I thought I knew a decent amount about the horrors of industrial agriculture, especially for commodities like palm oil, cattle, rubber, soy, etc. that have and continue to cause massive deforestation. But this taught me so much that I didn't know in a relatively short book - including and especially all of the health and nutrition concerns related to palm oil, and how they are tied to socioeconomic disadvantage, both on a personal and geographical scale.
Although Zuckerman tries to end the book on some hopeful notes - promising partnerships and agreements, NGO watchdog groups that monitor for deforestation in almost real time, and our capacity to change what we thought would never change - you are still left with a sense of dread at the scale, intensity, difficulty to control, and most importantly, money behind this problem. I truly hope things will change, especially as the knowledge we have about this industry grows. The first step, at least, is consumer awareness.
Thank you to the publisher for the ARC via Netgalley!
heres_the_thing's review
3.0
A sobering and well-explored history of palm oil, past and present. Discusses the ways in which palm oil has contributed to societal ills (slavery, forced labor, corporate greed, malnutrition) and climate change.
thesassybookworm's review
4.0
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Definitely an interesting read. Not the most upbeat of books, but a very important read for everyone. I found it a little "dry" in places, but the author did well in presenting us with a lot of facts and information to chew on. I'll admit, how prevalent the use of palm oil actually is surprised me.
**ARC Via NetGalley**
Definitely an interesting read. Not the most upbeat of books, but a very important read for everyone. I found it a little "dry" in places, but the author did well in presenting us with a lot of facts and information to chew on. I'll admit, how prevalent the use of palm oil actually is surprised me.
**ARC Via NetGalley**
blondereader's review
informative
slow-paced
3.5
Interesting, especially for those intensely interested in the industry. Reading this book encouraged me to try to limit palm oil where I can.
read_nap_repeat's review
4.0
This book was a little depressing but also very informative. A good reminder of why consumers need to opt for palm oil-free products on store shelves and why we have to stop voting politicians into office that don't believe the science behind climate change. The insights the author offered in her epilogue, written during the Covid-19 pandemic was my favourite part of the book. I found that up until then there hadn't been much emotion infused in the chapters. Overall I found it to be a little dry but I still think it's an important read for anyone wanting to learn about the environmental destruction taking place in some very important ecological regions on earth.
More...