Vegetable oil is in everything from margarine to shampoo, and producing it costs more biodiversity than previously assumed. A study led by Stephan Pfister of ETH Zurich's Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, published in Nature Food, estimates that oil crops are responsible for about 1.5 per cent of global animal and plant species loss, with the damage rising about 80 per cent between 1995 and 2020.
The team mapped the cultivation of 19 oil crops worldwide using satellite data, agricultural statistics and global land-use datasets, applied regional species-loss factors, and traced the impacts through a global supply-chain model to final consumers. Oil palm, soybean and coconut alone account for about three-quarters of the total impact, and tropical regions suffer most, since these crops occupy land of exceptional biodiversity while yielding relatively little per unit of area.
More than half of the damage occurs far from where the products are consumed: the EU, China and the United States together account for over 80 per cent of these offshore impacts, with Europe mainly importing palm oil and China's footprint tied to soybean animal feed. Rising per-capita consumption, not population growth, is the main driver, leading the authors to call for gentler production methods, ecosystem protection in producer countries and changes in consumption.