Planet Palm is one of those books which rips an important ingredient of our food and energy supply. It does a pretty good job describing the challenges that come with the significant increase of the supply side, including indentured labor (without using that term) or mono culture and deforestation. It is one of those books we may have read about Cobalt mines in our electric cars, shrimp sourcing in Bangladesh or the Amazon deforestation to satisfy our beef cravings.

While it is well written, it does not address the demand side: Why is it that we are using Palm Oil above anything else? The book describes some of the initiatives that have been taken to label palm oil and mark sustainability as we know if from other labels such as fair trade. But since it is mostly an ingredient, the packaging would not suffice to provide equal space for all questionable ingredients in products like Nutella. 

It is well written, and if you are professionally active in the food supply chain, you may want to consider picking this one up. For the rest of us, it is just one of those books that makes you feel more miserable when you look at your nutrition and makes you question what is left to eat.

Eye Opening, Yet Problematic Itself. This is a well documented work - roughly 30% of the text was bibliography, even if much of it wasn't actually referenced in the text of the advance reader copy I read. (Perhaps that will be corrected before actual publication, so if you're reading a fully published version circa June 2021 or later, please comment and let me know. :D) It does a tremendous job of showing the development of palm oil from regional subsistence level agriculture to today's modern arguably Big Palm level industry, and how it spread from regional staple to in seemingly every home in the "developed" world, at minimum. It is here that the book is truly eye opening, and truly shows some areas that perhaps still need some work.

HOWEVER, the book also often lauds communists and eco-terrorists, among other less than savory characters, for the "efforts" to "combat" this scourge - and this is something that is both pervasive throughout the text and a bit heavy handed, particularly when praising a team of Greenpeace pirates who tried to illegally board a cargo ship a few years ago.

Still, even with the aforementioned pervasive praise of people who arguably truly shouldn't be, the fact that the text does such a solid job of explaining the various issues and histories at hand alone merits its consideration. Recommended.