棕榈油在食品和生活用品成分中十分常见

棕榈油在食品和生活用品成分中十分常见

If you read ingredient labels, you'll see palm and palm kernel oil everywhere: in bread, chocolate, frozen pizza -- even soap, toothpaste and cosmetics. No wonder the oil palm tree, whose fruit and seeds are used to produce these oils, is in tremendous demand as a crop in West and Central Africa and Southeast Asia.

如果你阅读成分标签，你会发现棕榈油和棕榈仁油随处可见：面包、巧克力、冷冻披萨——甚至肥皂、牙膏和化妆品。难怪油棕榈树，其果实和种子被用来生产这些油，作为一种作物在西非和中非和东南亚有着巨大的需求。

But while the trees are considered a highly productive source of vegetable oil, farming them can carry a heavy environmental impact. As large farms clear land to make room for oil palms, deforestation and forest fires can occur, threatening biodiversity.

但是，虽然这种树被认为是一种高产的植物油来源，但种植它们可能会带来严重的环境影响。随着大型农场为种植油棕榈腾出空间，可能会发生砍伐森林和森林火灾，威胁到生物多样性。

Liberian entrepreneur Mahmud Johnson has come up with a possible solution. He is installing milling machines in rural communities to help small local growers increase their yields on wild-growing trees, allowing them to produce the oil more sustainably and to generate enough earnings to stay independent.

利比里亚企业家马哈茂德·约翰逊想出了一个可能的解决方案。他正在农村社区安装磨铣机，帮助当地的小种植者提高野生树木的产量，使他们能够更可持续地生产油，并产生足够的收入来保持独立。

The global palm oil market is staggeringly large, with the industry valued at $62 billion in 2016, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Palm oil is found in roughly half of all supermarket products, says the UN, as well as in biofuels.

据联合国环境规划署的数据，全球棕榈油市场大得惊人，2016年该行业价值620亿美元。联合国称，大约一半的超市产品中含有棕榈油，生物燃料中也含有棕榈油。

The oil palm is grown in 43 countries and accounts for 10 percent of the world's permanent crop land -- producing 70 million tons of palm oil each year.

这种油棕生长在43个国家，占世界永久耕地的10%，每年可生产7000万吨棕榈油。

Since the oil palm yields four to ten times more vegetable oil per hectare than any other crop, there is no obvious alternative, according to The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Unilever has been exploring harvesting oil from the seeds of the Allanblackia tree, and if demand keeps rising, it could one day be a significant part of a sustainable global oil market, according to the IUCN.

据国际自然保护联盟(IUCN)称，由于油棕每公顷的植物油产量是其他作物的4至10倍，因此没有明显的替代品。据世界自然保护联盟(IUCN)称，联合利华一直在探索从阿兰布拉克亚树的种子中收获油，如果需求持续上升，总有一天它将成为全球可持续油市场的重要组成部分。

The oil is excellent for producing spreads and grows wild in Ghana and Tanzania, but at a much smaller scale than palm oil.

这种油非常适合在加纳和坦桑尼亚种植，但规模比棕榈油小得多。

Meantime, Johnson thinks he can help feed the tremendous demand for palm oils in a sustainable way.

与此同时，约翰逊认为他可以以一种可持续的方式帮助满足对棕榈油的巨大需求。

Johnson grew up in Liberia, on the west coast of Africa, where his aunt collected palm oil from communities to sell to retailers. As a teen, he interned at the Liberian president's office collecting data on international development aid, before spending four years studying economics at Dartmouth College and taking part in leadership and development programs.

约翰逊在非洲西海岸的利比里亚长大，他的姑妈从当地社区收集棕榈油，然后卖给零售商。十几岁时，他曾在利比里亚总统办公室实习，收集有关国际发展援助的数据。之后，他在达特茅斯学院学习了四年经济学，并参加了领导力和发展项目。

While looking for an entrepreneurial opportunity to pursue back home, he saw government estimates that up to half of palm fruit is wasted during harvest, and a third during processing. At age 22, he returned to Liberia to start a company, J-Palm, to address the issue.

在寻找回国创业的机会时，他看到政府估计棕榈果实在收获期间浪费了一半，在加工过程中浪费了三分之一。22岁时，他回到利比里亚，创办了一家名为J-Palm的公司，以解决这个问题。

"In most West African countries, palm oil trees grow in the wild," says Johnson, now 28. "Most of the smallholder farmers who have access to those trees don't have access to process palm oil."

“在大多数西非国家，棕榈油树在野外生长，”现年28岁的约翰逊说。“大多数可以种植这些树的小农却无法加工棕榈油。”

Farmers were using inefficient extraction methods, he says, using sticks to pound the fruit for palm oil. They also were throwing away the kernel, which could instead be processed to make palm kernel oil.

他说，农民们使用的是低效的提取方法，用棒子敲打果实来提炼棕榈油。他们还扔掉了原本可以加工成棕榈仁油的果仁。