Palm oil.
You've probably heard of it,
yet don't know exactly what it is.
But unless you're on an exclusive nut and berry diet
you're probably eating some today.
Or at least rubbed some on your body this morning.
The miraculous, versatile substance
is used in thousands of everyday products,
from chips and ice cream to shampoo and fuel.
On average, we consume about eight kilograms,
or around 18 pounds of palm oil every year.
It comes from the red fruits of an oil palm tree.
Palm is usually not a whole ingredient in something,
with the exception of cooking oil.
We're often using a fraction.
It's a part of the fruit, a part of the oil,
so it's really easy for that
to be invisible within a product.
Seems like the ultimate
natural resource, right?
Just pick the fruit off the tree and make stuff with it.
But palm oil has become very controversial
in recent years for its cost on the environment.
Vast swaths of forests have been burned by farmers
to make way for oil palm plantations,
causing the wholesale destruction of natural habitats,
and ultimately contributing to climate change.
There have also been reports of serious
labor rights abuses in the industry.
Despite public and private sector efforts
to mitigate palm oil's environmental impact,
only 20% of the world's palm oil
is certified as sustainable today.
Like most problems related to the climate crisis
there doesn't seem to be one clear solution.
The damage being done by the palm oil industry
is significant and not going away anytime soon.
But farmers, big companies, and scientists
are working in their own ways
to try to chip away at its negative effects.
The way that we produce food now is a modern miracle,
but it's also having an enormous impact on the environment.
We have to create changes.
We have to work towards creating these novel foodstuffs,
which have much lower impact, which are healthy,
and delicious, and different to what we had before.
Edy is one of 16 million people
working in the palm oil industry in Indonesia,
the world's biggest palm oil producer,
churning out about 47 million tons in 2020 alone.
About 40% of the oil palm plantations in Indonesia
are owned by small scale farmers like Edy,
who have less than 25 hectares of land.
But many small holders didn't have
an understanding of sustainable farming.
Slashing and burning the forest was common
because it was the cheapest and fastest way
to make land to grow oil palm trees.
Between 2005 and 2013, almost half of the deforestation
in Indonesia was linked to oil palm cultivation.
2015 was the worst year.
Between June and October,
fires burned an area roughly the size of Rwanda,
or the US state of Maryland.
Researchers linked the toxic haze, which lingered for weeks,
to more than 100,000 premature deaths in Indonesia,
and in neighboring countries like Malaysia and Singapore.
In 2016, Indonesian president Joko Widodo
imposed a moratorium on new permits for clearing forest
and peatland for oil palm cultivation.
Deforestation linked to palm oil is still happening,
but educational campaigns and stricter law enforcement
have reduced it significantly.
More farmers like Edy have joined
small holders associations like this one.
With financial support from NGOs and big companies,
they've got certification from institutes
like the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, or RSPO.
Sustainable palm oil has to meet strict standards,
such as using best farming practices,
conserving the environment,
and considering employees benefits and rights.
But Edy's only one of a tiny number
of certified small holders
because many farmers don't have the resources
or access to get certified.
And challenges still remain after being certified.
The other piece of the puzzle is big palm oil companies.
Here at Golden Agri-Resources,
we have more than 500,000 hectares of palm oil plantations
across Indonesia, but we also buy fresh fruit bunches
from other producers of palm.
And so we actually trade and process
closer to around six to eight million tons of what's called
crude palm oil, or palm related products.
Harvested fruit bunches are sent to mills
and then refineries for processing.
The outer orange part of the fruit creates crude palm oil,
which can be turned into many different products,
like cooking oil and biofuel.
The white creamy substance
inside the kernel creates palm kernel oil,
which is used in cosmetics, soaps, and hand sanitizers.
In the past, criticism of the industry
in terms of its impact on forests, wildlife,
and even on local communities, sadly, was justified.
We wanna be able to produce the equivalent
of a million hectares of land
on that half a million hectares of land.
So focusing on using biotechnology techniques,
but also really good farming practices.
But full traceability of the supply chain
still remains a challenge.
Third party plantations are usually in remote locations
spanning millions of hectares.
Another challenge is consumer commitment.
About 20% of the world's palm oil was certified
as sustainable, but buyers only bought half of it.
So the greatest demand still comes from buyers in Europe
and the US, to a certain extent Australia.
However, the largest volumes are sold
in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and China,
where demand for a sustainable product is still very low.
Making palm oil production sustainable
is crucial, but some scientists are hoping
we could stop using it completely.
But the researchers working on an alternative to palm oil
will need to ensure their products
are competitive in quality and price.
Ultimately, there's no mystery to palm oil.
It's a relatively simple group of compounds
of which other organisms can make as well.
And that's what we've been able to mimic with the yeast.
So this process is very similar to brewing beer,
technology we've known about for thousands of years.
Where, when you brew beer,
you take sugars and grow a brewing yeast on them,
which produces ethanol, which we can drink.
In our process, we're using natural yeast,
which naturally make edible oils.
Finding the right yeast is key.
After a few years of researching and experimenting,
the team found metschnikowia pulcherrima,
a yeast that grows on the surface of grapes
all over the world.
And then they spent another eight years developing the yeast
and the process to grow it.
Here, we have to use large drums
of eight kilograms of the sugar.
It's dragged into the reactor here
and then fed to the yeast.
Now here we have 50 liters of culture,
and this is enough to make kilograms of yeast in a week.
This is also a really good mimic
to demonstrate what an industrial process
will truly look like on the large scale.
So the yeast we selected at first didn't make much oil,
but it had a number of other attributes
which allow us to produce it on the large scale.
So it could be produced under a wide temperature range.
It could be produced under a wide range of pHs.
It also can use a whole range of sugars,
saccharides, and proteins to grow,
which allows us to use waste resources very efficiently.
The team has completed research
and development, successfully fed the yeast
with waste food like coffee grounds,
and agricultural leftovers like wheat straw and sawdust.
Now, they're running a pilot,
producing kilograms of palm oil substitute per week.
And aim to increase that to tons per week within a year.
So here we have the yeast.
And you have these giant cells,
which are then full of oil, which we can extract.
A startup has been spun out from the project,
raising over $2.5 million,
with the goal to bring the product to grocery store shelves.
In the last few decades, we've seen people
really starting to choose alternative products,
alternative analogs to meat, for example.
Products like yeast protein from corn.
We see ourselves as continuing that journey
and being the next generation of novel foods.
Regardless of what the future holds,
the palm oil industry needs to make serious changes today.