I can remember when using natural cork as a wine bottle stopper was considered bad as cork forests were being destroyed. Cork oak trees, Quercus suber, are largely (more than 60%) grown in Portugal. Now sustainable forest management means real cork is an eco-friendly, sustainable crop, supporting livelihoods in Portugal and around the Mediterranean. Using real cork is now more virtuous than struggling with plastic stoppers.
I’d like you to think the same way about palm oil. 80% of palm oil is grown in Indonesia and in the 21st century responsible plantation management means it is sustainable as well as being the main source of employment in rural Indonesia. It is harvested almost every day of the year, providing continuous employment, unlike seasonal crops. It can only be harvested by hand, unlike other edible oils such as soya. The life cycle of oil palms is about twenty-five years, unlike soya that has to be replanted annually, and oil palms yield up to five times more oil per hectare than soya. What’s not to like?
Oil palms, like trees, absorb carbon dioxide (about sixty-four tonnes per hectare) and release oxygen. You can read reports suggesting that oil palms damage the environment and these invariably refer to conventional palm oil production that plant on peat and destroys natural forest. Sustainable plantations are good for the environment.
But it has a bad reputation. It is considered a badge of honour not to use palm oil. I heard somebody on the wireless yesterday boasting her artisanal chocolates are not made from palm oil. Many fund managers eschew companies that produce palm oil. I expect this to change as the many benefits of sustainable palm oil production are understood. But for now shares in sustainable palm oil producer MP Evans languish at a significant discount to the fair value for their plantations. The latter is about £15 and the shares trade at under £8. This is such a large anomaly that MP Evans are buying back their own shares and this year, so far, have paid up to £7.70. As you may know I have been a shareholder for more than forty years. I support the MPE ethos and have no plans to sell my shares, not least because of handsome dividends, on an ever-rising trajectory, and their exemption from inheritance tax.
Yes please buy cork too! I speak as the owner of a small cork forest. We had a harvest this year and as I sit at the breakfast table I can see the trunks turning from a pale brick colour to a dark chocolate red.
Think: drinking wine is your contribution to the cork industry which is totally reliant on the cork oak forests of southern Portugal which are an essential habitat of the cork oak bat whose numbers have declined as their habitat is reduced and as a result the millions of parsitic bugs which decimate the crops are spreading. I could go on but just drink more wine and save the planet…