24.04.2018 (Reuters) - YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Buyers are wrong to remove palm oil from their products and should instead focus on working with sustainability schemes and smallholder farmers, an Indonesia-based conservation organization said on Tuesday.

British supermarket chain Iceland said earlier this month that it would remove palm oil from its own-brand food by the end of 2018 as part of efforts to stem deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia and help species under threat of extinction.

“It is just the latest fashion that buying palm oil is a bad idea,” said Robert Nasi, director general of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

Much better is for buyers and consumers to work with sustainability bodies and schemes, like the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and then strengthen those standards, Nasi told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The managing director at Iceland, which trades from 900 stores and which specializes in frozen food, said the company did not believe there was such a thing as sustainable palm oil available to retailers.

Palm oil is used in a wide range of food and household products, from biscuits, ice-cream and chocolate spreads to soaps and cosmetics, as well as in biofuels.

“The main issue is not palm oil - it is where it is planted,” said Nasi, speaking on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit in Yogyakarta, on the Indonesian island of Java.

Palm trees produce four to 10 times more oil than other vegetable oil crops per unit of cultivated land.