The Tropical Oil Crop Revolution: Food, Feed, Fuel, and Forests

Co-authored with Derek Byerlee and Walter P. Falcon.

This book provides a broad synthesis of the major supply and demand drivers of the rapid expansion of oil crops in the tropics; its economic, social, and environmental impacts; and the future outlook to 2050. After introducing the dramatic surge in oil crops, a comparative perspective is provided from different producing regions for two of the world’s most important crops: oil palm and soybeans from the tropics. Next, the drivers of demand for food, livestock feed, and biofuel are examined, followed by an introduction to price formation in vegetable oil markets and the role of globalization in linking consumers throughout the world through trade from distant producers in a few producing countries. Last evidence on the economic, food security, social, and environmental impacts of the oil crop revolution in the tropics is reviewed. Although both economic benefits and social and environmental costs have been huge, the outlook is for reduced tradeoffs and more sustainable outcomes as the oil crop revolution slows and the global, national, and local communities converge on ways to reduce deforestation, better manage land rights and develop smallholder models for the sector.

Rosamond L. Naylor is the William Wrigley Professor in Earth System Science, a Senior Fellow at Stanford Woods Institute and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the founding Director at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, and Professor of Economics (by courtesy) at Stanford University.