Gangtok, Oct 19: As part of a national mission, the Union government plans to cover an area larger than the entire state of Sikkim with palm oil plantations in six northeastern states.
The government has been giving much priority to palm oil plantations, taking all necessary measures, and encouraging farmers to take up farming, which has lots of opportunities.
The government has launched a national mission on edible oils (palm oil) (NMEO-OP) in 2021–22 with the objective of enhancing edible oil production through area expansion and crude palm oil (CPO) production of oil palm and reducing the import burden on edible oils.
As per the re-assessment of potential areas for oil palm cultivation in India by the Union government, a total area of 840,344 hectares (8403.44 sq km), larger than the total area of Sikkim, was found suitable and recommended for oil palm plantations in the northeastern states.
The plantation area includes 133811 ha in Arunachal Pradesh, 375428 ha in Assam, 66652 ha in Manipur, 51297 ha in Nagaland, 66792 ha in Mizoram, and 146364 ha in Tripura.
Palm oil plantations have had devastating consequences for the biodiversity in parts of Indonesia and Malaysia. Many vast monocrop oil palm plantations have displaced tropical forests across Asia, Latin America, and West Africa.
Around 90% of the world’s oil palm trees are grown on a few islands in Malaysia and Indonesia – islands with the most biodiverse tropical forests found on Earth. In these places, there is a direct relationship between the growth of oil palm estates and deforestation, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
Palm oil has been used for human consumption for thousands of years. The liquid fraction of palm oil is used worldwide for edible purposes, mainly in the form of cooking oil, shortenings, margarines, blending with other oils, and in the manufacturing of several food products. Palm oil is free of cholesterol, like other vegetable oils.
Oil palm plantations in Mizoram had the lowest forest bird species richness (10 species), followed by teak plantations (38), according to a paper published in the Ornithological Applications journal by TR Shankar Raman and Jaydev Mandal, which was published in May 2016.
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