What if the crusade to save the planet’s forests by boycotting palm oil is actually accelerating their destruction? Palm oil, vilified as the scourge of rainforests and orangutans alike, was ranked by consumers as the most environmentally damaging vegetable oil in a recent survey. That’s despite its lurking in nearly 50% of supermarket products—from doughnuts and pizza to toothpaste and lipstick. Yet, as environmental researcher Hannah Ritchie argues in her book Not the End of the World, this well-meaning activism could be backfiring, driving worse deforestation elsewhere.
Ritchie’s seemingly counterintuitive claim rests on palm oil’s hidden edge: it’s a productivity powerhouse. Oil palms churn out far more oil per hectare than any rival crop, so boycotting it pushes the world toward less efficient substitutes—think soybeans or coconuts. Those alternatives don’t just need more land; they demand a sprawl of it to match palm oil’s output, risking new waves of deforestation in far-flung forests.
Think about how much oil this produces. Now compare that to trying to extract that much oil from coconuts or sesame seeds. Image source
The proof is in the yields: one hectare of oil palms can produce over a metric ton of oil, trouncing soybean oil’s 0.161 metric tons per hectare or coconut oil’s scant 0.041. As the graph below shows, palm oil is remarkably land-efficient—palm oil supplies 40% of the world’s vegetable oil on less than 6% of the land used to produce all vegetable oils.
Palm oil dramatically outperforms other vegetable oils in terms of production efficiency, yielding significantly more oil per hectare. Data Source: Our World in Data
Here’s how Hannah Ritchie puts it:
Here’s another thought experiment to drill this point home: let’s consider how much land the world would need to produce all its vegetable oils from any one of these options. We currently use 322 million hectares to grow oil crops. That’s an area the size of India. If we were to get all of it from palm oil we’d need just 77 million hectares—four times less. We’d free up a lot of land. On the other hand, if we got it all from soybean oil, we’d need more land: 490 million hectares. From olive oil we’d need twice as much land as we currently use—around 660 million hectares. Two Indias.
But instead of using the minimum land possible, avoiding palm oil has become a cause célèbre in environmental activism. In 2017, Ben and Jerry’s proudly announced they had removed palm oil from their ice cream, joining numerous companies in a seemingly virtuous effort to protect the environment. Entire nonprofit organizations have emerged solely dedicated to this effort. For instance, Ethical Consumer, a prominent nonprofit focused on guiding ethical purchasing decisions, maintains a list of palm oil-free products. Organizations like Palm Oil Detectives offer comprehensive lists of palm oil-free snacks.
We can see the vegetable oil substitution happening right on the ingredients list. If we look at the companies that Palm Oil Detectives points to, the top link is to Bean Supreme, whose “eco-friendly” productsallcontainvegetableoil. The most prevalent vegetable oil in the US is soybean oil. From the above chart, we can see that it’s 8.2 times less efficient. That means we have to use 8.2 times more land to get the oil we need.
One could counter that not all land is equally valuable—perhaps using ten times as much land elsewhere is acceptable if it spares the orangutans’ habitats. This is a valid point. However, we can’t assume that avoiding palm oil means that alternative oils will be cultivated in areas that are better for the environment.
For instance, Ben and Jerry’s switched from palm oil to coconut oil1. But coconuts are also grown in tropical regions, just like palm oil (except, of course, they use much more land to do so). This substitution satisfies the activists, but it leads to more tropical deforestation—over 30 times more based on the graph above.
Figuring out the true impact of a crop like palm oil is not easy. Land efficiency tells a critical part of the story—palm oil’s unmatched yield per hectare suggests boycotts could backfire, clearing more forests elsewhere. But it’s not the whole picture. What kind of land is used? Who depends on its production for their livelihoods? How do fertilizers, pesticides, or transportation emissions factor in? These tangled threads remind us that environmental choices ripple through complex systems—markets, ecosystems, communities—in ways that defy easy answers.
Perhaps one solution is the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a non-profit that has developed standards for responsible palm oil production. The goal is to bring together producers, manufacturers, and environmental groups to certify palm oil that meets criteria aimed at reducing deforestation, protecting wildlife, and supporting local communities. On the surface, it seems promising—a practical way to harness palm oil’s efficiency while curbing its harms.
However, a quick internet search reveals that it has many critics. Most of the criticism points to weak enforcement, loopholes, and greenwashing (see here for a good overview of the many criticisms). A 2017 study evaluating the impact of RSPO certification found that while it reduced deforestation in certified plantations, especially in high tree cover and primary forest areas, its overall impact was limited due to the small proportion of plantations certified and their tendency to have little remaining forest already. However, the study concluded that “higher levels of certification could generate greater forest protection.” I haven’t been able to dig into everything, and while some of the criticism certainly has some merit, my sense is that RSPO is a step in the right direction and we should seek to improve it rather than scrapping palm oil entirely.
The 2017 study found that about 83% of plantations were not members of RSPO. It seems like getting more of them to operate under RSPO certification, especially plantations that have forest remaining, would be a good step forward. This image was taken from the study.
Zooming out, you can see what has happened here: Vegetable oil is incredibly useful, which has created immense demand for it. Suppliers aim to meet this demand in the cheapest and most efficient way possible, which leads them to palm oil because it produces the most oil per hectare. As demand grows, forests are cleared to plant oil palms. When activists discover palm oil plantations contributing to deforestation, they launch campaigns targeting palm oil specifically, rather than considering the broader context. Companies, eager to respond positively to activist pressure, abandon palm oil in favor of less efficient—and potentially more harmful—alternatives.
There’s an important lesson here—not just about activists getting something wrong, but about how well-intentioned activism can go astray. One of Hannah Ritchie’s key recommendations for environmentally friendly eating is to “eat foods that are grown where conditions are optimal.” This is what markets naturally do: they gravitate toward efficiency, selecting products like palm oil precisely because it makes the most economic sense.
The point isn’t that markets are perfect—they aren’t. Markets can indeed lead to negative externalities, and interventions are sometimes necessary. But markets are extremely efficient. When activism pushes companies away from palm oil without a detailed understanding of the alternatives, the result can lead to even worse environmental damage. In particular, attempting to intervene in competitive markets without fully understanding their complexities and nuances often produces unintended negative consequences. This pattern is not unique to palm oil activism; similar unintended consequences appear in issues like rent control causing housing shortages or overly cautious regulation stifling nuclear power and thereby hindering clean energy development.
All of these complexities underscore a broader lesson for environmental activism: effective activism is hard.
Passion fuels activism, but good intentions don’t guarantee good outcomes. When we rally behind a cause like boycotting palm oil without wrestling with its full implications—land use, livelihoods, emissions, and all—we risk stumbling into solutions that harm more than they help. The data here suggests shunning palm oil might accelerate deforestation elsewhere, a twist that underscores a hard truth: uninformed zeal can unravel the very goals we’re chasing. Ultimately, effective activism must embrace complexity and nuance. Understanding deeply—not just passionately—is essential for truly making the world better. Real progress demands more than heart—it calls for digging into the messy details and owning the complexity, lest we trade one crisis for another.
Perhaps activists could adopt an intellectual pledge: before passionately campaigning against something, spend more time exploring resources like Our World in Data. Maybe crack open some Vaclav Smil and pledge, “I understand How the World Really Works. I know that Numbers Don’t Lie and How to Feed the World. And, above all, I know that environmental challenges require careful, informed solutions, but they are Not the End of the World.”
Rethinking the Palm Oil Boycott
This essay is cross-posted from https://thegreymatter.substack.com/p/rethinking-the-palm-oil-boycott
What if the crusade to save the planet’s forests by boycotting palm oil is actually accelerating their destruction? Palm oil, vilified as the scourge of rainforests and orangutans alike, was ranked by consumers as the most environmentally damaging vegetable oil in a recent survey. That’s despite its lurking in nearly 50% of supermarket products—from doughnuts and pizza to toothpaste and lipstick. Yet, as environmental researcher Hannah Ritchie argues in her book Not the End of the World, this well-meaning activism could be backfiring, driving worse deforestation elsewhere.
Ritchie’s seemingly counterintuitive claim rests on palm oil’s hidden edge: it’s a productivity powerhouse. Oil palms churn out far more oil per hectare than any rival crop, so boycotting it pushes the world toward less efficient substitutes—think soybeans or coconuts. Those alternatives don’t just need more land; they demand a sprawl of it to match palm oil’s output, risking new waves of deforestation in far-flung forests.
The proof is in the yields: one hectare of oil palms can produce over a metric ton of oil, trouncing soybean oil’s 0.161 metric tons per hectare or coconut oil’s scant 0.041. As the graph below shows, palm oil is remarkably land-efficient—palm oil supplies 40% of the world’s vegetable oil on less than 6% of the land used to produce all vegetable oils.
Here’s how Hannah Ritchie puts it:
But instead of using the minimum land possible, avoiding palm oil has become a cause célèbre in environmental activism. In 2017, Ben and Jerry’s proudly announced they had removed palm oil from their ice cream, joining numerous companies in a seemingly virtuous effort to protect the environment. Entire nonprofit organizations have emerged solely dedicated to this effort. For instance, Ethical Consumer, a prominent nonprofit focused on guiding ethical purchasing decisions, maintains a list of palm oil-free products. Organizations like Palm Oil Detectives offer comprehensive lists of palm oil-free snacks.
We can see the vegetable oil substitution happening right on the ingredients list. If we look at the companies that Palm Oil Detectives points to, the top link is to Bean Supreme, whose “eco-friendly” products all contain vegetable oil. The most prevalent vegetable oil in the US is soybean oil. From the above chart, we can see that it’s 8.2 times less efficient. That means we have to use 8.2 times more land to get the oil we need.
One could counter that not all land is equally valuable—perhaps using ten times as much land elsewhere is acceptable if it spares the orangutans’ habitats. This is a valid point. However, we can’t assume that avoiding palm oil means that alternative oils will be cultivated in areas that are better for the environment.
For instance, Ben and Jerry’s switched from palm oil to coconut oil1. But coconuts are also grown in tropical regions, just like palm oil (except, of course, they use much more land to do so). This substitution satisfies the activists, but it leads to more tropical deforestation—over 30 times more based on the graph above.
Figuring out the true impact of a crop like palm oil is not easy. Land efficiency tells a critical part of the story—palm oil’s unmatched yield per hectare suggests boycotts could backfire, clearing more forests elsewhere. But it’s not the whole picture. What kind of land is used? Who depends on its production for their livelihoods? How do fertilizers, pesticides, or transportation emissions factor in? These tangled threads remind us that environmental choices ripple through complex systems—markets, ecosystems, communities—in ways that defy easy answers.
Perhaps one solution is the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a non-profit that has developed standards for responsible palm oil production. The goal is to bring together producers, manufacturers, and environmental groups to certify palm oil that meets criteria aimed at reducing deforestation, protecting wildlife, and supporting local communities. On the surface, it seems promising—a practical way to harness palm oil’s efficiency while curbing its harms.
However, a quick internet search reveals that it has many critics. Most of the criticism points to weak enforcement, loopholes, and greenwashing (see here for a good overview of the many criticisms). A 2017 study evaluating the impact of RSPO certification found that while it reduced deforestation in certified plantations, especially in high tree cover and primary forest areas, its overall impact was limited due to the small proportion of plantations certified and their tendency to have little remaining forest already. However, the study concluded that “higher levels of certification could generate greater forest protection.” I haven’t been able to dig into everything, and while some of the criticism certainly has some merit, my sense is that RSPO is a step in the right direction and we should seek to improve it rather than scrapping palm oil entirely.
Zooming out, you can see what has happened here: Vegetable oil is incredibly useful, which has created immense demand for it. Suppliers aim to meet this demand in the cheapest and most efficient way possible, which leads them to palm oil because it produces the most oil per hectare. As demand grows, forests are cleared to plant oil palms. When activists discover palm oil plantations contributing to deforestation, they launch campaigns targeting palm oil specifically, rather than considering the broader context. Companies, eager to respond positively to activist pressure, abandon palm oil in favor of less efficient—and potentially more harmful—alternatives.
There’s an important lesson here—not just about activists getting something wrong, but about how well-intentioned activism can go astray. One of Hannah Ritchie’s key recommendations for environmentally friendly eating is to “eat foods that are grown where conditions are optimal.” This is what markets naturally do: they gravitate toward efficiency, selecting products like palm oil precisely because it makes the most economic sense.
The point isn’t that markets are perfect—they aren’t. Markets can indeed lead to negative externalities, and interventions are sometimes necessary. But markets are extremely efficient. When activism pushes companies away from palm oil without a detailed understanding of the alternatives, the result can lead to even worse environmental damage. In particular, attempting to intervene in competitive markets without fully understanding their complexities and nuances often produces unintended negative consequences. This pattern is not unique to palm oil activism; similar unintended consequences appear in issues like rent control causing housing shortages or overly cautious regulation stifling nuclear power and thereby hindering clean energy development.
All of these complexities underscore a broader lesson for environmental activism: effective activism is hard.
Passion fuels activism, but good intentions don’t guarantee good outcomes. When we rally behind a cause like boycotting palm oil without wrestling with its full implications—land use, livelihoods, emissions, and all—we risk stumbling into solutions that harm more than they help. The data here suggests shunning palm oil might accelerate deforestation elsewhere, a twist that underscores a hard truth: uninformed zeal can unravel the very goals we’re chasing. Ultimately, effective activism must embrace complexity and nuance. Understanding deeply—not just passionately—is essential for truly making the world better. Real progress demands more than heart—it calls for digging into the messy details and owning the complexity, lest we trade one crisis for another.
Perhaps activists could adopt an intellectual pledge: before passionately campaigning against something, spend more time exploring resources like Our World in Data. Maybe crack open some Vaclav Smil and pledge, “I understand How the World Really Works. I know that Numbers Don’t Lie and How to Feed the World. And, above all, I know that environmental challenges require careful, informed solutions, but they are Not the End of the World.”