-Livemint.com * Amid soaring cooking oil prices, India has a new plan to grow oil palm locally. Is the solution worse than the problem? * India plans to add about 2.5 million tonnes of home grown crude palm oil by 2030. Its ₹11,000-cr national mission on oil palm focuses on north-east and Andaman and Nicobar Islands M V. Ramoji Rao is a seasoned dentist and a busy one too. It’s not easy to...
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Oil palm plan for northeast, Andamans a recipe for disaster, say activists -Priscilla Jebaraj
-The Hindu Environmental experts and politicians raise concern over Centre’s proposal. Given the widespread destruction of rainforests and native biodiversity caused by oil palm plantations in Southeast Asia, environmental experts and politicians are warning that the Centre’s move to promote their cultivation in India’s northeastern States and in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands could be disastrous. Other concerns include the impact on community ownership of tribal lands, as well as the fact that...
More »Ambiguous definition means oil-palm plantations will count as forest cover -Jayashree Nandi
-Hindustan Times The Forest Survey of India defines forest cover thus: “All lands, more than 1 ha in area with a tree canopy density of 10% irrespective of ownership and legal status. The National Mission on Edible Oils- Oil Palm (NMEO-OP), approved by the Union Cabinet last week, will increase the area under oil palm cultivation by an additional area of 6.5 lakh hectare (ha) by 2025-26, bringing a total area of...
More »How our food choices cut into forests and put us closer to viruses -Terry Sunderland
-Down to Earth The food most associated with biodiversity loss also tends to also be connected to unhealthy diets across the globe As the global population has doubled to 7.8 billion in about 50 years, industrial agriculture has increased the output from fields and farms to feed humanity. One of the negative outcomes of this transformation has been the extreme simplification of ecological systems, with complex multi-functional landscapes converted to vast swaths...
More »White fly hits oil palm, yield plummets -KV Kurmanath
-The Hindu Business Line Hyderabad: Industry association asks govt to remove land ceiling norms, source better varieties Oil palm growers in Andhra Pradesh are facing big trouble as plantations in the northern part of the State, particularly in East and West Godavari districts, have been hit by white fly infestation. Vast stretches of oil palm plantation in the State have been hit by white fly, which reportedly crossed over from infected coconut groves...
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