1. Introduction
Palm oil, obtained from the African Oil Palm Elaeis guineensis
(Jacq.), is an important world commodity. It is the world’s third
most produced edible oil, following closely behind soya and
rapeseed oil. Along with its use in food, it is also used in a wide
array of cosmetics and pharmaceuticals and increasingly for bio-
diesel production. Despite a short-term economic dip, diesel fuel
prices are likely to continue to increase over the next decades and
so will the demand for alternative sources. The world market for
palm oil has been growing steadily at about 8% per annum (Carter
et al., 2007). Thus, oil palm is considered as a multipurpose and
economically significant crop in many developing countries. The
area under oil palmcultivation is likely to greatly increase over the
next two decades. In Thailand, for example, the Royal Thai
Government has a policy of a 5-fold expansion in the area under oil
palm cultivation over the next 20 years. The company PT Central
Palm Plantation intend to invest an additional US $280 million to
further develop oil palm plantations in Indonesia (Anonymous,
2008). In South America, Colombia’s agricultural policy includes an
enormous increase in the area under cultivation; particularly in
post-conflict regions such as the Eastern Plains. Whilst the
Brazilian government had signed a deal with Malaysia‘s landdevelopment to establish 100,000 hectares of oil palm plantations
on forest land near Tefe in the Brazilian state of Amazonas.