Indonesia's palm oil boom takes environmental toll

0 Comments | AFP, April, 2008

KUALA CENAKU, Indonesia (AFP) — Marto Wijoyo and his family left the overcrowded Indonesian island of Java 27 years ago in search of a better life on neighbouring Sumatra.

The government had given Wijoyo, now 60, a tract of fertile land to plant with rice and a home to call his own as part of a plan to ease Java's population pressures.

Soon, he was producing twice-yearly harvests of more than ten tonnes of rice. Life was easy then, he said.

All that changed four years ago when his neighbours in this lush village in Sumatra's Riau province decided to join the palm oil craze that has turned Indonesia into the world's biggest producer.

Farmers across the region have switched from food crops to oil palm, lured by rising prices as the demand for the...