Palm oil has six times the oil yield of soybeans and a host of uses, and palm oil plantations have exploded throughout Southeast Asia and Africa in the last few decades. Singapore-based Wilmar controls nearly 940 square miles, mostly in Indonesia. The plantations and associated refineries have provided much-needed jobs in poor, rural parts of the tropics. Most of the workers at Sapi are Indonesian, with men assigned to the laborious cutting and harvesting, while women apply fertilizer and pesticides, wearing required protective gear. But the vast monocultures have led to rampant clearing of some of the most biodiverse forests on the planet, with more than 1,500 square miles a year destroyed between 1997 and 2006. The deforestation of carbon-rich peatlands in Indonesia made the rural nation the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. The global backlash against palm oil has drastically reduced those rates. Large plantations, like Sapi, now claim to adhere to international standards for sustainable production practices, although those standards remain controversial.
