24 August 2009

Fonterra misleading farmers on palm kernel claims

Fonterra is contradicting the World Bank and misleading farmers in its attempts to justify the massive use of rainforest-destroying palm kernel on intensive dairy farms.

“Fonterra is misleading New Zealanders and defying a World Bank report that found their partner company Wilmar was destroying rainforest to produce palm oil and kernel,” said Green Party Co-leader Russel Norman.

“There are lots of good, responsible dairy farmers in NZ and Fonterra should back them. Industrial-scale dairying is irresponsible because it relies on destructive products like palm kernel, which also hurts other Kiwi farmers and our economy.”

A recent World Bank report into Wilma – Fonterra supply partner for palm kernel – was damning, following complaints that Wilma companies, “illegally used fire to clear forestland, cleared primary [old-growth native] forests, and seized lands belonging to indigenous people without due process.”

Meanwhile, Fonterra claimed this morning on RadioNZ that palm kernel is ‘just a by-product’, that their palm kernel is bought from a certified source, and that farmers had no other supplementary feed choice in last year’s drought.

Yet managers at Fonterra subsidiary RD1 have said that the price of palm kernel is ‘driven by demand’, with ‘sharp increases in the use of PKE in recent years being driven partly by more intensive farming systems’.

Dr Norman says, “It is quite clear that the demand for palm kernel, driven by Fonterra’s push for intensive dairying, is boosting the price. This in turn assists palm companies’ profitability and leads them to destroy more rainforest for plantations.

“It’s simple demand and supply economics – yet Fonterra wants you to somehow believe we’re doing the world a service by taking a by-product no one else wants.

“Fonterra’s second claim, that their palm kernel is sustainably certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), is also bunkum,” said Dr Norman. “The Roundtable is reported as stating that ‘certainly very little expeller cake [palm kernel] coming into New Zealand last year would have been RSPO certified at all’.

“Fonterra third claim, that large-scale palm kernel use was a response to drought, also does not stack up against the facts.

“Even before last year’s drought we imported half-a-million tonnes of palm kernel (2007), and in the first four months of this year we have imported another 260,000 tonnes.”

Federated Farmers’ maize growers’ rep, Colin McKinnon, is reported as saying that ‘palm kernel is also threatening the viability of [NZ grown] maize production for stock feed’.

“As Fonterra’s spin-doctors try to wriggle out of their embarrassing situation, the Penan people in Borneo are today protesting in a last effort to protect their remaining lands from palm plantation companies,” said Dr Norman.

“Fonterra has nowhere to hide on this one. Their palm kernel use is deeply implicated in rainforest destruction and human rights abuses, and they need to fix it, now.”

References:
RadioNZ interview: http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/mnr/mnr-20090824-0821-Green_groups_point_finger_at_Fonterra_for_palm_kernel_use-048.mp3

World Bank report: http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/08/19/19climatewire-how-the-world-bank-let-deal-making-torch-the-33255.html

RD1 statements: http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/farming/1385857 and http://www.rd1.com/web/content?in_section=2&in_item=640&in_page=6654

Penan peoples’ protests: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/SE%2BAsia/Story/STIStory_420346.html

ENDS

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