Western agriculture, better or worse than palm oil plantations??

It was evident through Basiron (2007) article that he strongly believes that palm oil is sustainable and portrays the industry is a very good light. Although I didn't agree with everything stated in his article I did like how he made comparisons with other agricultural crops, displaying the positives of producing palm oil over soybean and rapeseed for example.

I decided in light of this, to look in greater depth at other crops grown globally. Through doing so it led me to consider what damage western agriculture has done and is still doing to our globe. Everyone has the right to develop land, so I wondered was palm oil plantations damaging the globe to a greater extent than the west have done over the last few centuries? 

A fantastic blog has been written by Megan Smith which has explored the history of agriculture and intensification over the last century. Although it focuses on agricultures ability to feed a growing population over the course of the last few months it has displayed large environmental issues of intensive agriculture in the west.

The blog highlights that intensive agriculture:

• Requires large amounts of energy input to produce, transport, and apply chemical fertilizers/pesticides
• Alters and often destroys the natural habitat of flora and fauna.
• In many cases has led to extensive soil erosion.
• The use of fertilisers and pesticides often remove useful insects that naturally act as a biological control from other unwanted pesticides
• Additionally if fertilisers and pesticides are washed into nearby water sources they can have disastrous impacts completely altering the habitat within the lake or river, leading to the death of many aquatic flora and fauna.

All of which display western agriculture to be hugely environmentally damaging and potentially just as bad as palm oil plantations. Literature surrounding the topic, led me back to an article written by Basiron (2006)  comparing the proportion of total virgin forest cover and agricultural land in both Malaysia and the UK. Shockingly it highlights that 64% of Malaysia is covered by rainforests, with agricultural land standing at 19%. Whereas forests in the UK only occupies 12% of total land mass, with nearly 70% of land being used for agriculture!!!

If these figures are taken on face value, this would mean that in terms of forest destruction western agriculture has been far worse.  In spite of this it must be taken into consideration that Malaysia is more than 100,000 square kilometres bigger than the UK and therefore data present in this way, portrays the Malaysian situation in a far better light.