经济学人下载:食用油产业怎么了?

The effect of growing demand for the two main types of vegetable oil, palm and soya (see chart), is amplified by supply problems. In the case of soya, competition for land is the main concern. Farmers in America, the world’s top exporter, and Brazil, in second place, are switching to maize as sky-high prices make it more attractive.

人们对植物油的两种主要原料棕榈和大豆需求在不断增加，而供应问题却严重影响了此种需求。就大豆而言，如何争取到更多的土地成为问题的关键。由于玉米高昂的价格优势，全球农产品出口居首位的美国及位居第二位的巴西正将目光投向玉米种植。

Palm oil, also used to make soaps and cosmetics, comes almost exclusively from Indonesia and Malaysia. It suffers from even more acute supply problems. Already intensively cultivated and mechanised, there are few opportunities for farmers to increase output by improving yields on existing acreage. Developing and rolling out new higher-yielding strains is much easier and quicker for annual crops like wheat than for perennials such as palm trees that take time to mature and will bear fruit for many years.

生产肥皂和化妆用品的棕榈油几乎都产自于马来西亚和印尼。它所面临的供应问题就更为严重。尽管农民已精耕细作并实现了机械化种植，但仅凭提高现有土地面积的产出已很难让棕榈油产量得到大幅提升。开发和种植新型高产品种对小麦这种一年生作物会有立竿见影的成效，而棕榈树这种多年生植物需要很长时间才能到达成熟期并且数年之内都可产出棕榈油。

Finding more land has unpalatable costs. Environmentalists point out that the spread of palm-oil plantations is the greatest threat to forests in Indonesia and Malaysia. In May Indonesia introduced a two-year moratorium on forest clearance in return for $1 billion, as part of a bilateral climate deal with Norway. But loopholes and exemptions mean that it may not slow down deforestation much. Like its crude counterpart, the march of the vegetable-oil business is not easily resisted.

寻找更多土地的成本代价令人难以接受。环境专家指出棕榈油种植园的扩张成为印尼和马来西亚的森林的最大威胁。作为与挪威双边气候协定的部分内容，五月份，印尼引入两年期森林禁止砍伐计划以获取10亿美元的回报。但由于政策漏洞及豁免规定，该计划对森林砍伐速度可能不会有太大的影响。与石油开发商相同，进军植物油产业的诱惑力难以抵挡。