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Team:Manchester/EconomyPart4
From 2013.igem.org
When doing the initial research for our synthetic alternative to palm oil components, we quickly came across lots of information regarding the current palm oil industry. It soon became apparent that the economies of some countries, for example Indonesia and Malaysia, depend almost entirely upon the current methods of palm oil production. Therefore we compiled a detailed impact analysis report for synthetic palm oil, which can be found by clicking on the button to the right.
As palm oil is commonly used for different purposes today, the introduction of synthetic palm oil is expected to alter the markets of not only palm oil, but food and the likes too in terms of prices.
- Food price has been escalating for years and the trend is suggested to go on for the next few decades.
- This rise in price is because the emphasis on biofuel has increased the demand for palm oil and has implicitly encouraging the use of food crops in biofuel production rather than being processed into edible food.
If palm oil is synthetically produced, as our project demonstrates is possible, the food price would be more stable as food crops would be used for food purposes only rather than for feeding the microbes used in biofuel production.
As outlined in the previous sections, introducing a synthetic alternative to a natural product may have dire consequences on the populations most reliant on the natural cultivation of the product. However, certain things can be done to minimise the impact felt by these countries. These possibilities are discussed further in the following pages.
References
[1] http://www.globalharvestinitiative.org/Documents/Kruse%20-%20Demand%20for%20Agricultural%20Commoditites.pdf
[2] Photo © canadapost
