Taking Matters Into Our Own Palms

Richard Ha writes:

Over the weekend I went to a Palm Oil presentation given by Dr. Bill Steiner, the recently retired Dean of the University of Hawai‘i College of Agriculture, Forestry & Natural Resources, and I made a decision: We are going to plant palms, and produce enough palm oil to make our farm free of fossil fuel in 10 years.

We use 12,000 gallons of diesel annually for our tractors and trucks. 

Oil palms produce 500 gallons/acre per year. If we plant thirty acres in palms, that should produce 15,000 gallons annually. This would allow us to grow our crops and definitely get them to market, no matter what happens in the Middle East. 

We have the land, deep soil and free water. A big disadvantage is that harvesting palm oil is labor intensive, but the palms will not need to be replanted for 25 years. We already have the land, and if oil is cheap and abundant 10 years from now, then we control our cost by not harvesting. If, at that point, oil is expensive and hard to get, then we harvest and are to get our produce to market. There are some other issues, which we are working through right now. 

Palm oil production is a proven technology. Palms like to grow in the tropics, and Hawai‘i is not perfect at 22° north latitude, but we think it’s good enough. Palms need 80 inches of rain per year, and where we are we have one and a half times that amount falling out of the sky.

Robert Rapier, who writes the R-Squared energy column at Consumer Energy Report, has this to say about palm oil:

The Palm Oil Conundrum

by Robert Rapier

People sometimes ask which biofuels are competitive head to head with crude oil. By competitive, I mean those that can actually compete favorably with oil prices on a level playing field (i.e., they don’t require big subsidies or mandates in order to compete). There are two that always come to mind: Ethanol from sugarcane (although less competitive currently due to high sugar prices) and fuel from palm oil (oil derived from the fruits of the African Oil Palm). In fact, in the first book chapter I wrote in 2007 (Renewable Diesel in Biofuels, Solar and Wind as Renewable Energy Systems: Benefits and Risks) I highlighted palm oil as a crop with great promise, but also great environmental risk:

By far the most productive lipid crop, palm oil is the preferred oil crop in tropical regions. The yields of up to five tons of palm oil per hectare can be ten times the per hectare yield of soybean oil. Palm oil is a major source of revenue in countries like Malaysia, where earnings from palm oil exports exceed earnings from petroleum products.

Read the rest

Comments

[Una Greenaway]

That's great Richard. You also have quite a bit of
land, so it makes good sense. good luck.

[Carolyn Mohn]

The problem with palm oil in Malaysia is they are cutting/clearing the native forests to plant this and in the process are losing wildlife, insects, indigneous plants, etc. As long as we are not doing that here, oil palms might be part of the solution for our petroleum problem.

[richard ha]

Mahalo Una. I appreciate it. Especially coming from someone like you who lives sustainability.

Aloha