PALM oil has experts who have spent decades mastering agronomy, chemistry, logistics, sustainability metrics and compliance frameworks. But they have not always mastered the most demanding crop of all: people – particularly Gen Y and Gen Z. These are not easy generations, nor were they meant to be.
Gen Y or millennials (born 1981-1996) grew up being told they could change the world – only to discover that the world responded with student debt, climate anxiety, job insecurity and unpaid internships politely labelled “exposure”.
Gen Z or zoomers (born 1997-2010) skipped the optimism altogether and went straight to scepticism, armed with smartphones, compressed attention spans and an unsettling ability to fact-check authority in real time. In the bandwagon, we have Gen Alpha (from 2010 to 2024) and next Gen Beta (between 2025 and 2039).
Together, they form a demanding audience. They do not read manuals. They interrogate narratives. They do not accept hierarchy by default. They reward authenticity and punish spin swiftly, publicly and often in memes.
And palm oil? Palm oil is used to speaking in technical reports with jargons, policy statements and carefully crafted paragraphs. It prefers certainty. It is comfortable with PowerPoint. It likes order. That is precisely the challenge.
To engage these generations, palm oil cannot simply repeat itself louder. It must rethink how it speaks, who it listens to, and whether it is prepared to trade monologue for dialogue. This is not a branding exercise. It is a cultural one because Gen Y and Gen Z are not waiting patiently at the edge of the industry. They are already shaping its narrative – online, on campus, and across global sustainability platforms.
The only question is whether palm oil chooses to speak with them – or continues talking about them.
If I were a millennial or zoomer
So, if I were a Gen Y or Gen Z in the palm world, I would not enter through the estate gate with a harvest pole on my shoulder. I would arrive with a smartphone in my hand, AI-powered algorithms in my pocket, and a head already full of opinions – most of them inherited, compressed into headlines, hashtags and thirty-second verdicts.
Palm oil, to me, would not begin as a crop. It would begin as a controversy. A word wrapped in caution tape. Something that required a qualifier, a footnote or an apology. Sugar does not explain itself. Soy does not defend its existence. Palm oil does. And naturally, I would also ask – quietly, but honestly: Why palm oil?
From being spoken to, to being listened to
I belong to two generations that have grown allergic to being managed by monologue. We do not reject authority; we reject pretence. We can sense a scripted narrative from a mile away and once detected, our attention quietly logs out.
So when palm oil conversations arrive as lectures – stiff, polished, defensively perfect – we disengage. Not because we are disinterested, but more so because we are unconvinced.
What changed everything for me was encountering a space where no one tried to “correct” me before first hearing me. No podium. No laser pointer. Just a circle, a cup of latte and a simple invitation: What do you really want to know?
It was not clever branding. It was a philosophical shift – a recognition that engagement does not begin with transmission, but with respect. And when I can sense I am being taken seriously, curiosity replaces cynicism almost instantly.
From performance to conversation
The tone mattered. The informality mattered. Once the performance dropped, the questions came out – real ones. About forest, biodiversity and land. About labour. About labelling. About hypocrisy.
About why palm oil seems to carry the moral burden of the entire global food system.
What surprised many was not the sharpness of our questions, but the patience with which they were asked.
We were not looking to win arguments. We were trying to make sense of contradictions. Conversation did what PowerPoint never could. It slowed things down. It allowed uncertainty. It made learning human again.
Knowledge before advocacy
I quickly realised something fundamental: advocacy without understanding is brittle. It cracks at the first serious challenge. That is why the idea stayed with me – to love palm oil is to know palm oil.
Not to worship it. Not to excuse its flaws, but to understand it deeply enough to defend what is defensible and challenge what is not.
When I learned that oil palm occupies less than half a percent of global agricultural land yet supplies over a third of the world’s edible oils, the narrative may shift.
When I understood why replacing palm oil wholesale with other oils could worsen land use elsewhere, the conversation matured. Facts alone did not persuade me.
Context did. And when knowledge is paired with honesty, pride begins to form – not blind pride, but informed pride.
Unfortunately, much of this context is missing even at home. Our school syllabi barely touch the subject, leaving students without the facts, let alone the framework to interpret them.
More troubling still, even among local medical fraternity, views on palm oil’s health attributes remain divided – often shaped more by headlines than by shared evidence. If those entrusted with public knowledge cannot agree on the basics, one is tempted to ask, apa macam?
From hashtags to ownership: The #MyPalmPride effect
What cut through the noise, however, was not institutional campaigns, but one interesting initiative, #MYPalmPride – a youth-led digital movement by NGO REGENERASI that understood, instinctively, how these generations think and feel.
It did not shout slogans or sanitise complexity. Instead, it spoke their language: short, evidence-based videos; myth-busting posts; campus conversations; and stories anchored in everyday relevance - health, environment, livelihoods and national contribution.
Young Malaysians were not treated as passive audiences to be persuaded, but as creators, ambassadors and narrators of the palm oil story itself. The impact of their approach is not merely anecdotal; it is measurable. REGENERASI reported that the #MYPalmPride campaign reached more than 4.29 million people globally, generating over 10.6 million impressions between June and October 2025.
Millions reached, engagement surged on Instagram and TikTok, and youth-generated content - from #ArtPalm visuals to Sembang Sawit snippets - consistently outperformed institutional messaging.
Like most of my peers, my first instinct was digital and this was where #MYPalmPride, felt unmistakably different. It did not ask me to amplify slogans or defend positions on cue; it invited me into storytelling. Short, evidence-based videos, myth-busting posts, campus conversations and youth-led features spoke in a language that felt native rather than translated.
Youth-created content consistently outperformed institutional messaging for a simple reason: it sounded like us. We spoke plainly, admitted complexity, used humour when it helped and restraint when it mattered.
Somewhere along the way, something subtle but profound shifted. Palm oil stopped being their issue and became our conversation, not inherited defensiveness, but growing ownership. Metrics mattered less than that quiet internal moment when one realises, almost to oneself: maybe this story is also mine to tell.
Yet the real success lay beyond metrics: thousands also leaned in, explored further, pledged support, and began to claim a quiet sense of ownership. The lesson was unmistakable - when youths are trusted with truth, invited into conversation, and given space to speak in their own voice, advocacy stops being borrowed enthusiasm and becomes something far more durable: stakeholdership. This must be supported and sustained.
From Awareness to Capability
What impressed me most was that the journey must not end with awareness. It must invest in capability. I was not trained to shout louder than critics. I must be guided and trained to explain more clearly than the noise. To engage without defensiveness.
To hold two truths at once: that palm oil has made enormous contributions, and that it must continue to improve - without fantasy or denial. This was not indoctrination. It was education in its truest sense: equipping young minds to handle nuance without collapsing into outrage or apathy.
Looking ahead, youth engagement cannot remain bounded by national borders. Sustainability debates are global, and youth voices must travel accordingly.
This became evident when REGENERASI participated as a Youth Partner at the RSPO Roundtable 2025, where young delegates spoke on panels, questioned global leaders, and engaged peers from around the world - not as observers, but as contributors. These efforts have since drawn interest from bodies including the Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries.
From Sparks to Stewardship
These conversations did not end when the microphones were switched off. They continued on campuses, in group chats, across social platforms and eventually beyond borders. Being present at global platforms was not about optics. It was about participation: listening, questioning, contributing.
Sustainability debates do not stop at national boundaries, and neither should youth voices. What began as local sparks slowly revealed its long-term ambition: better stewardship.
Here is the truth my generation is trying to understand instinctively: no industry is perfect. Palm oil included. But imperfection should not paralyse progress. It should provoke it.
We must be allowed to hold balanced positions - to affirm genuine sustainability efforts, to challenge weak practices, to reject blanket condemnation, and to remain alert to narratives driven by ideology or commercial convenience rather than truth. That kind of thinking is not loud. But it is durable.
If I Were to End with One Thought
If I were a Gen Y or Gen Z in palm oil world, I would not ask to be shielded from complexity. I would ask to be trusted with it. Trust us with the facts. Equip us with context. Give us space to speak in our own voice.
Because when that happens, palm oil’s story will no longer be written about youths. It will be written by us - with nuance instead of noise, dignity instead of defence, and stewardship instead of slogans.
And that, perhaps, is where the real sustainability journey truly begins.
Joseph Tek Choon Yee has over 30 years of experience in the plantation industry, with a strong background in oil palm research and development, C-suite leadership and industry advocacy. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
