OIL PALM plantations have been unfairly implicated by non-government organisations as the primary driver of deforestation, but the crop takes up only 0.1% or 15.6 million ha worldwide.
On the other hand, the livestock industry in 2012 utilised 31% or 4.7 billion ha of the world’s total land area – 300 times more land area than that used by the palm oil industry, says Malaysian Palm Oil Council chief executive officer Tan Sri Dr Yusof Basiron.
