Planters ordered to destroy oil-palm as Sri Lanka joins boycott

(April 6): Palm oil suffered another blow as Sri Lanka banned imports of the world’s most-consumed cooking oil and told planters to get rid of all the tropical trees in the country. The island nation joined some other countries in bashing palm oil. The US has stopped inbound shipments from some top producers in Malaysia, on allegations of forced labour in the second-biggest grower, while the EU plans to phase out palm-based biofuels by classifying the commodity from large plantations as unsustainable. Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa ordered companies and other entities growing oil palm to remove the trees in a phased manner. They have been asked to uproot 10% of the trees each year and replace the fields with rubber or other environment-friendly crops, according to an official statement late Monday. “Palm oil imports don’t help their cash crops, while oil palm plantations could lead to deforestation in the country,” said Gnanasekar Thiagarajan, head of trading and hedging ...