Missing the Wood for the Palms

Missing the Wood for the Palms

The palm oil industry traces its roots directly back to the transatlantic trade in enslaved people, and to the colonisation that followed European capitalists’ realisation that it remained lucrative, and was less bad for PR at ‘home’, to simply seize the products of African labour.1 Palm oil is still harvested by poorly-treated workers who are still paid incredibly little by global standards, on plantations that have been in place since the colo…