The problems with palm oil
There are a number of problems with palm oil production that the government has failed to mention.
For a start, oil palms require a large amount of water. They’re also very nutrient-intensive, draining the soil wherever they’re grown so that nearby fields and forests become barren.
Thirdly, they thrive on the plains, where the land is flat - hardly ideal for the North East of India. The principal area where oil palms are currently grown is the state of Mizoram. Mizoram is mountainous, with many farming areas inaccessible to machinery, and harvesting the heavy fruits is slow and arduous.
Some farmers in Mizoram who have been growing oil palm for over a decade reported that they had made little or no profits, mainly due to the system of buying oil – companies that had agreed to buy their produce failed to follow through – and the local infrastructure, with the poor state of roads making transportation extremely difficult. Legally speaking, these companies were obliged to pay compensation. Yet in practice there’s little a small-scale farmer can do, lacking the resources to take the case to court, and the big companies get away with it.