Nick Miroff has a fascinating article in tomorrow’s Washington Post discussing palm oil in Colombia:
…the rapid growth of the palm industry is revealing new evidence of a boom that has benefited from the displacement of small farmers, indigenous people, and others due to armed conflict. Many of the regions where palm has expanded over the last decade are infamous for paramilitary violence and rural terror, like the northern coast near Cartagena, the Venezuela border region, and the southeastern plains of Meta department, where Mapiripan is situated.
As the government and the largest rebel group in the country, the FARC, strive to establish a peace contract to end the violence, Colombia faces the challenging task of unraveling the events that unfolded in Mapiripan and similar areas, and determining a path forward.
At the heart of the conflict lies a contrasting vision of rural development—between the traditional approach that has been partially dismantled by violence and an agribusiness model that promises growth, employment, and modernization via the expansion of commodity crops like African palm.
I have visited Meta, Colombia a few times and gathered some intriguing insights about the palm industry. I plan to report all this out soon, but for now, here’s some info, free of charge.
Workers on palm plantations, as Miroff details, earn roughly $25 per day, which seems low. However, they work 30-day shifts straight, without a single day off, totaling around $750 a month — comparable to a schoolteacher with a doctorate. Many are migrant laborers who travel over 20 hours from impoverished, remote areas to reach the plantations and return home with their earnings.
Palm cultivation presents a significant threat to monkey habitats. Colombia boasts some of the richest monkey diversity globally. Unfortunately, their protection is very weak.
New palm plantations in oil-producing regions are being irrigated with produced water from oil wells. This could either be an innovative water management strategy or a terrible spread of carcinogens into the environment (and the workplaces of those migrant workers). We will find out sooner or later, I guess.