Why our food choices can make all the difference in saving endangered elephants from extinction
The use of palm products to feed industrial animal agriculture is pushing the Sumatran elephant to the brink of extinction
“We are really scared for our children,” a villager told me. “What if they are playing while we’re away? Who will help them?” There had been a raid last night in this northern Sumatran village of Bangkeh, and the community was out in force. Police were already on site. Feelings were running high. On the edge of the forest, the side of a simple wooden house had been ripped off. The room, festooned with laundry, was now open to the elements. After a smash-and-grab raid, the assailant had fled back into the forest, leaving frightened villagers fearing his return.
So, who was the shadowy figure who had come in search of a free meal?
The clue lay in Sumatra’s rich forests, home to the critically endangered Sumatran elephant, one of whom, desperate for food, was responsible for the raid.
I was in Sumatra to investigate a little-known facet of the palm industry: the use of palm products to feed industrial animal agriculture, particularly in Britain and Europe.
The use of palm oil directly as a common food ingredient is well known; what is not so is the use of palm products for animal feed. The edible seed is often rendered down into kernel oil, meal or ‘cake’ and then transported to the feed troughs of industrially reared animals, particularly for cattle.
What I discovered was that this global demand is pushing the Sumatran elephant to the brink of extinction.
Trouble on my tail
Whilst in Sumatra, trouble followed me everywhere. I arrived to find the airline had lost my luggage. So, for ten days, I was bitten by leeches, slept rough in the jungle, or in cockroach-ridden hotels, and traipsed through forest and swamp in just the clothes I stood up in.
I was also followed by a dull, hazy smog so bad that it even disrupted air traffic and caused the government to declare a state of emergency. This smog was coming from rampant deforestation, burning forests to make way for more industrial palm plantations, adding to climate change, and leading to the demise of the critically endangered Sumatran elephant.
I teamed up with former Reuters journalist, Dendy Montgomery, who was familiar with the area and its forests. We drove through palm country for hours. The roadsides were lined with little else but green palm trees. Everywhere, there were bright yellow palm-oil tankers and trucks piled high with the knobbly palm fruits.
Dominated by multinational networks based in Asia, Europe and North America, the global palm trade is worth $50 billion a year. From the air, the plantations look like giant green carpets. Sadly however, they’re just a lifeless monoculture, made up of mile upon mile of the same tree, propped up by a barrage of herbicides and pesticides.
Protest and prison
Villagers told me how they felt tricked out of their land by the palm industry so had taken matters into their own hands. One villager, known to us as Prakoso, was jailed for nine days after burning a bulldozer in protest. He was not alone. Two hundred people protested, nine were imprisoned.
Prakoso took us to where the locals fought their pitched battle. Teeming rain made the going treacherous. The bumpiest tracks were now as slippery as an ice-rink. I clung to the seat of our four-wheel drive, fearing we’d plunge down the sheer slope, never to be seen again. Eventually we reached the top of a hill named Titi Akar, where we found a scene of devastation. A black eagle uttered plaintive cries as she flew over the depleted forest. On a barren hillside razed by fire, young palm saplings poked out of plastic sheeting designed to stop the jungle growing back.
Palm plantations and elephants don’t mix. When the jungle is cleared, chemicals are put down to protect the young trees. Porcupine and wild pigs are poisoned. Sometimes, elephants are too. I spoke to a villager who found a dead elephant poisoned in a nearby oil-palm plantation. It was the second such report I’d heard inside a week. With Aceh’s elephants already down to their last 500, things didn’t sound good. My final day in Sumatra brought one last dose of trouble. I was invited back to a palm plantation for some final research. My mistake was in accepting the invitation.
No sooner as we’d got there, I heard an ominous rustle all around. Out of instinct, I ran. There was a deafening crash, followed by a powerful slap of canopy across the back of my head. When I stopped running, I turned to see that a large tree had fallen just where we’d been standing. It had been cut earlier and toppled just as we arrived.
I saw now why we had been warned off from digging too deep. What they didn’t want us to know was that the palm trade for animal feed was booming, further fuelling palm plantations and the demise of endangered elephants.
Consumer power
Right now, we have a vicious cycle: the increasing availability of palm-kernel meal for animal feed drives industrial animal farming which in turn drives demand for more cheap feed ingredient like palm kernel. Vast tracts of land are being lost to monocultures producing feedstock for animals rather than food for people. Among the losers in this equation are Sumatra’s dwindling elephants. Yet few consumers know that their milk or beef may have been fed from the ashes of former elephant habitat. Those keen to avoid meat and dairy from palm-fed animals can choose pasture-fed meat, be it beef or lamb, and organic dairy.
Philip Lymbery is Global CEO of Compassion in Farming International, a former United Nations Food Systems Champion and an award-winning author. His latest book is Sixty Harvests Left: How to Reach a Nature-Friendly Future. Philip is on Twitter @philip_ciwf
Note: This article was first published in The Scotsman on Friday 23rd August, 2024
