- Recently, the Prime Minister announced a National Mission on Edible Oil-Oil Palm (NMEO-OP), with an investment of over Rs 11,000 crore over a five-year period.
- However, some environmentalists have raised concerns over the disastrous impact of palm oil plantations.
Important points:
- NMEO-OP is a new Centrally Sponsored Scheme. It is proposed to have an additional 6.5 lakh hectares for palm oil by 2025-26.
- It will involve raising the area under oil palm cultivation to 10 lakh hectares by 2025-26 and 16.7 lakh hectares by 2029-30.
- Oil palm farmers will be provided financial assistance and will get remuneration under a price and viability formula.
- The Viability Formula is a Minimum Support Price-type mechanism and the government will fix this at 14.3% of Crude Palm Oil (CPO) price.
- It will eventually go up to 15.3%.
- Another focus area of the scheme is to substantially increase the support of inputs/interventions.
- Special assistance will be given to replant old gardens for their rejuvenation.
Special Focus:
- The special emphasis of the scheme will be in India’s North-Eastern (NE) states and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands due to the conducive weather conditions in the regions.
- To attract industry to the NE and Andaman regions, a provision of Rs 5 crore of 5 mt/hr (million tonne per hectare) with pro-rata increase for higher capacity will be given.
- To harness domestic edible oil prices that are dictated by expensive palm oil imports and become self-reliant in edible oil.
Way Forward
- If similar subsidies and support are extended to oilseeds which are indigenous to India and suited for dryland agriculture, they can help achieve self-reliance without dependence on oil palm.
- A solution would be to grow oil palm on agricultural land if farmers are willing to do it and the government incentivises it.
SOURCE: THE HINDU,THE ECONOMIC TIMES,MINT