I’ve spent a lot of time researching the palm oil industry. A whole year to be exact. When I was approached in 2017 by some concerned customers about the rainforest devastation in Malaysia and the plight of the orangutans who are being slaughtered there my initial decision was to stop using palm shortening altogether and find a substitute. As a Buddhist I take right action very seriously. So I started recipe testing every possible shortening substitute I could think of. And I began reading everything I could on palm oil. At the end of my journey what I learned surprised me. And yet at the same time it didn’t—the industrial food complex is literally “complex”.

The palm oil boom in the 2000s was due to the widespread condemnation of partially-hydrogenated oils. To be simple—they’re bad. They are a chemically altered fat that our bodies don’t really know how to digest. Enter palm oil. Palm oil is good! It’s a natural substance that is solid at room temp. It has a high melting point. It is virtually tasteless. Our bodies can digest it. Palm oil will yield five times the amount of oil per hectare over any other commonly used oil—soybean, canola, etc. For these reasons and more it became the highly sought after replacement oil for all things partially-hydrogenated. And like most things with a sudden high demand the creation of it was damaging to the parts of the world that could supply it.

So the "Big Ag" companies of the industrial food complex started using palm oil in everything. And pretty quickly environmentalists took note. Celebrities bemoaned its use. It fell out of favor (and onto my radar). In the meantime the scientists at the large-scale industrial food complex companies got busy. They have successfully created a new chemically altered fat. It’s not partially-hydrogenated oil—it’s fully-hydrogenated oil! Called “interestified fats” they are taking the place of palm oil across the industry. Interestified oils are made from the normal widely used oils—soybean, canola, etc. And the boom from the creation of these new chemically altered fats is causing deforestation on a mass scale. Remember the part about palm oil yielding five times the oil per hectare over conventional oils? This is the key. It takes five times the surface area to yield what was being produced by the now shunned palm oil industry. So instead of deforestation in Malaysia we are seeing it again in South America and now in parts of northern Africa. Virgin forests are being destroyed to build farms for the newly created interestified fats industry at five times the rate of what was previously needed. So the deforestation hasn’t stopped at all—it has actually increased. It has just moved to different parts of the globe. And due to label laws (or rather the lack of labeling laws) you are most likely already eating these interestified oils and don’t even know it. Are they safe? I don’t know. I’m not interested in eating them and finding out. The large-scale industrial food complex has many years to find out how these new interestified oils affect our bodies. Want to be their guinea pig? Me neither.

But there is a company in Brazil called Agropalma that has been farming palm oil sustainably for the past twenty years. It pays its farmers a fair wage. It has a zero deforestation policy in place—and it has been in place for the past twenty years. Agropalma can trace each batch of oil directly back to the farmer. No other large scale producer in the world is doing that.

As a former employee of an island teaching farm I know quite well the interdependencies of the farming industry and the tolls a bad year can have on a farmer. This condemnation of the palm oil industry, while certainly deserving for many reasons, has been economically devastating for the third-world farmers who depend on the industry to earn their living. The demand has plummeted. But the farmers who provide for Agropalma are still earning a living wage. This is something that is important to me. Just as I am always careful to only buy and drink fair-trade coffee and chocolate I am now sourcing all of my palm shortening for my pies from Agropalma. Does it cost more? Definitely. Is it worth it? Every penny. The pies are flakier, the farmers are paid more, and there is zero increase of deforestation. Right action is important. For everyone.

It was important for me to share my learning journey with you so that when you see “organic, sustainably-sourced palm shortening” on my label you know that a lot of thought went into it. I believe it’s the better choice, long-term, for our planet. I believe strongly that it is also the right choice for my business. I encourage everyone to continue to read labels carefully and as my food hero Michael Pollan says “Vote with your fork!”

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please stop by and visit at the farmer’s market, or send an email or a text—I look forward to talking with you about palm oil and the planet and of course…pie.