’We need more knowledge and more control’: Palm oil expands in Ecuador
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/11/we-need-more-knowledge-and-more-control-palm-oil-expands-in-ecuador
Over the past five years, the landscape of Maximiliano Moreno’s property in northern Ecuador and the air he breathes has changed. He went from being surrounded by vast forest to overlooking endless plains of oil palm. The situation prompted an agreement between Moreno and the owner of the neighboring land to reduce discharge from the plantation to his plots where he harvests cacao and breeds tilapias.
“Pollution [from oil palm cultivation] is something difficult, heavy insecticides are used, kilos of fertilizer per plant and everything is drained to the streams that cross the farm,” Moreno told Mongabay-Latam.
Moreno is a farmer and president of the Riveras del Punino community — located in the parish of Nuevo Paraíso, Francisco de Orellana (also known as Coca). Tempted by rising palm oil prices, he confessed that there was a time when he considered the possibility of working in the oil palm industry and cutting down all his fruit trees, cacao and timber inside his 30-hectare property. However, he was more interested in the conservation of his land’s vegetation and water sources. This was not the case for his neighbors, who Moreno said bought their respective 60-hectare properties to grow oil palm.