
News: This is worth 7 minutes of your time–a story of oil palm, Indonesia, researchers, and large multinational corporations.
What does this have to do with you? You eat it and use it. “Palm oil is used in a staggering number of consumer products, from fast food, chocolate spread, and cereals to toothpaste and dog chow. It is also a source of biodiesel.”
Can we (humans) work together to solve seemingly intractable challenges–stopping deforestation and maintaining species diversity yet providing nutrition (vegetable oil) for a growing world human population while also dealing with large-scale economic and educational disparity … all with threads running into politics, climate change, big corporations, and much, much more.
Are there solutions? Can we all work together? Are there ways in which we all can get something (but not everything) we want?
Read this story: Courting controversy, scientists team with industry to tackle one of the world’s most destructive crops (Dyna Rochmyaningsih, Science, 11 July 2019).