Across swaths of Southeast Asia, maturing palm oil trees, some as tall as a 12-story building, are turning into a multibillion dollar headache for local farmers, regional governments and consumers everywhere.
As oil palms approach their commercial lifespan of a quarter-century, they provide less of the versatile edible oil, used in everything from ice cream to cosmetics and fuel. Some plants become too ungainly to tackle for laborers, who rely on hand-held sickles attached to long poles. New palms, however, take several years to yield fruit in commercial quantities.
In palm-producing regions of Malaysia and Indonesia, where the pandemic led to a critical shortage of the manual labor on which the industry depends, an army of farmers has been postponing the inevitable. Squeezed by high costs and falling yields, many smallholders argue they can’t replant — and have no choice but to keep going.