The Motherland of Oil Palm [Noboru Ishikawa]
The Motherland of Oil Palm – a Travel Journal of West Africa Noboru Ishikawa（Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University） The landscape of a myriad of oil palm trees has now become a familiar sight in Sarawak, Malaysia where we have been working on our project. Oil palm trees originate from Africa and just like rubber, oil palm has flourished as a commercial crop in insular Southeast Asia, very far from its original birth place. Today, oil palm (Elaeisguineensis) is grown in plantations, and now has considerable impacts on the local communities and ecological environment of Southeast Asia. The following outlines the thoughts that crossed my mind during my field […]