06/11/2012 (The Star) - The intense boycott on palm oil by the French consumers and the rampant smearing campaigns by snack food producers there has led to a major uproar among oil palm smallholders worldwide.

Smallholders from Africa, the new frontier for oil palm cultivation, are now urgently calling for several French retail chains and food companies to quickly end their campaigns against palm oil.

A group of civil society organisations from Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Cameroon in an open letter to Casino, Systme U, Jacquet and Lays, claim that the anti-palm oil statements are incendiary and dangerous and threaten the livelihood and future opportunities for hundreds of thousands of low-income farmers.

Many are also pointing their fingers at the propagandas of the non-government organisations (NGOs) and green activists which are seen as the prime movers of the intense palm oil labelling activity in France.

Some smallholders group from Africa are said to be considering suing some NGOs which had initiated these anti-palm oil campaigns in France.

Similarly in Malaysia, some 500,000 smallholders are equally frustrated with the “no palm oil” labelling move in France.

“We are definitely seeing red over this issue,” National Smallholders Association (NASH) president Datuk Aliasak Ambia told StarBiz. Local smallholders contributed 40% of the total palm oil production in Malaysia.

On Oct 25, NASH submitted a letter to the French ambassador to Malaysia, Martine Dorance, to express the disappointment of Malaysian smallholders over the behaviour of French retailers in particular Casino and Systme U which have produced TV commercials slandering palm oil and by association, the small farmers which NASH represents.

To make matters worse, French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg had even said in a statement that “all (French) left-wing parties should campaign against palm oil.” There were also many half truth statements on palm oil being repeated by other French political leaders. For example, senator Jean-Vincent Place had claimed in Parliamentary Question 02164 that palm oil contained trans fat.

This is simply not true because palm oil is 100% free of trans fat, and in many countries, the oil has been instrumental in removing trans fat from the diets of citizens.

On the other hand, the World Bank, European Union, the Agence Francais de Developpement, the United Nations and even French supermarket chain Carrefour all support palm oil. NASH therefore hopes that the French government would accept the important role of palm oil in eradicating poverty and economic development in Malaysia.

Yesterday, Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Tan Sri Bernard Dompok said in Kota Kinabalu that his ministry and France's Agriculture Ministry would be setting up a committee to assist local palm oil producers gain access into the French market.

According to Malaysian Palm Oil Board statistics, there was “zero” export of local palm oil to France in February and May as well as for three consecutive months in July, August and September this year. The latest stats also showed January-September 2012 palm oil exports to France had been reduced significantly to 457 tonnes from 4,069 tonnes in the same corresponding period in 2011.

The difficulty in accessing the French market also brings forth the question as to why the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) cannot help these smallholders with their plight?

Some quarters claim that RSPO seems to be too busy certifying smallholders' sustainable palm oil so much so that it had inadvertently forgotten to support the products by way of promoting it diligently to its consuming members especially in the EU.