Description
Book SynopsisIt's in our instant noodles and chocolate bars, our lipsticks and fuel tanks. But what even is palm oil, and how has it come to dominate our lives so completely? Jocelyn C. Zuckerman travels across four continents and back two centuries to find answers about the most widely used vegetable oil on Earth. The little oil palm fruit has played an outsized role in world history and economic development. But the multi-billion-dollar palm oil business has been built on stolen land and slave labour; it spurred colonisation and swept away lives and cultures. Today, its fires and mass deforestation generate carbon emissions to rival those of entire industrialized nations, and they've pushed animals like the orangutan to the brink of extinction. Combining history, travelogue and investigative reporting, Planet Palm offers an unsettling, urgent look at a global industry that has become an environmental, public health, and human rights disaster.
Trade Review‘Planet Palm will and should enrage you. […] Troubling, thoroughly researched and thrilling from beginning to end, [Jocelyn Zuckerman’s] book traverses four continents in a broad sweep of the history, power and politics behind palm oil.’
'Planet Palm is an illuminating read, as engrossing as it is informative. Those who take some time with it will understand palm oil as a force of modern history and see just how much of the world map has been stained in red oil.'
-- Mongabay
