While palm oil is known for being very cheap and controversial, red palm oil is artisanally made and can be much more expensive. The vibrantly colored oil is made from palm fruits and can cost 2-3 times as much as its kernel oil counterpart / 16 times as much as other cooking oils. Despite the high cost, the handmade oil is a staple in West African households, used to make local dishes like jollof rice and Banga soup. But what makes it different from palm oil and why exactly is it so expensive?
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00 Today, Victor is climbing trees up to 40 feet high, equipped with a homemade axe, a rope
00:09 and his own bare feet, which he's using to reach something very valuable, the fruits
00:17 that'll be turned into red palm oil.
00:22 Standard palm oil, or palm kernel oil, is known for being quite cheap, but red palm
00:27 oil can cost three times as much.
00:30 When it's shipped to the US or the UK, it can sell for even more, up to $20 for a single
00:37 litre.
00:38 "Wherever the seed passes, it falls.
00:39 You know, the seeds will clump up."
00:42 Workers like Victor face snakes and the risk of falling just to harvest this valuable fruit.
00:49 But what makes red palm oil different from palm oil, and what exactly makes it so expensive?
01:04 This is what palm oil looks like.
01:07 Our local palm oil.
01:08 I actually prefer to cook with red palm oil because of the taste.
01:13 Red palm oil has a mildly floral flavour and a buttery texture.
01:17 Palm oil generally is used for our local food.
01:21 All the time, all the time, all the time.
01:29 Here in Undo State, Nigeria, making this local favourite is a labour-intensive and artisanal
01:35 process.
01:36 Thousands of fleshy palm fruits are transformed into yellow-brown sludge and then red-orange
01:43 oil.
01:44 Over the course of a week, it all starts on oil palm plantations like this one in the
01:50 village of Ayi.
01:52 Every few weeks, expert climbers are called in to harvest the palm husks.
01:58 The trees here can be as high as 60 feet.
02:02 Climbers like Victor don't wear any protective gear, relying on just handmade harnesses and
02:08 axes to help them up the palm trees.
02:20 Victor makes new ropes with fresh palm fibres whenever he feels his current one isn't
02:25 strong or tight enough.
02:28 This is important because old rope can become brittle and snap.
02:33 And sometimes, some people, they use their life.
02:38 See my rope now.
02:39 If I had other people, they would see they use it.
02:41 Don't sit on it, don't hold, and don't break.
02:44 You are the climb.
02:45 Gentle, gentle, no rush.
02:46 Use my axe.
02:47 Go hook up for your hitch.
02:51 It takes three years for oil palm trees to bear fruit.
02:55 But once they do, they can be harvested year round.
03:04 Sometimes they cut 200.
03:05 Every person wants to learn this work.
03:06 I have to teach them everywhere.
03:07 All this, I know will grow up.
03:08 It will be cleaner than us.
03:09 Now, we are going to cut it now.
03:10 The
03:31 biggest obstacle Victor faces once he's climbing is snakes.
03:42 The risk of falling has led some workers to stop climbing and instead help with collecting
03:46 the palm husks from the safety of the ground.
03:49 I need to climb trees.
03:51 Before, I used to climb these bengal.
03:54 These bengal are so dangerous.
03:56 If you climb them, if you go there, you will see snake for up.
04:10 It's very difficult to separate the fresh fruit from the thick, spiky palm husks.
04:19 So they're left out to dry.
04:21 This time also allows the fruit to ferment, which elevates the oil's flavor.
04:27 After three or four days, the fruits are ready to be dehusked.
04:32 Randy and other workers use axes to break the husks and sift the fruits to separate
04:39 them from dirt.
04:47 They collect the fruit in large sacks and transport it to a processing site in the nearby
04:57 village of Ileze.
05:04 Randy delivers the palm fruits to his wife, Deborah, who is one of the many workers toiling
05:10 away to transform the fruits into red palm oil.
05:19 The sacks of fruit are dumped into buckets and large drums.
05:36 Water is added to the drums to boil the fruit.
05:55 After one hour, the fruit is ready to be drained and taken to the miller.
06:00 Inside this drum, it boils.
06:06 The water doesn't change.
06:09 What they used to do before, if they didn't cut the fruit, they wouldn't pick and finish.
06:15 We don't do this by ourselves.
06:18 We don't carry the mills.
06:20 If they don't cook and finish, they go to the market and kill the fruit.
06:26 But the mill still involves a significant amount of labor as someone must manually load
06:31 and empty the fruit.
06:42 After the mill, it's time for another recently acquired machine, a hydraulic press.
06:52 The fruit, which has been milled into a pulp, is pressed to release its oil.
07:00 No kernel oil is released here because that would require the seeds to be dried and cracked.
07:07 Some locals do produce kernel oil, but since it's more difficult to make without special
07:11 machinery, it's not as common.
07:15 While oil palms originated in West Africa, colonization led to the rapid expansion of
07:20 oil palm plantations throughout Southeast Asia.
07:24 Eventually, Southeast Asia took over the global palm oil industry, and as other oils also
07:29 grew in popularity, West Africa never quite caught up.
07:34 West Africa's rainy season, which typically lasts from May to October, is also an ongoing
07:40 issue.
07:41 Rainy season, if rain falls, if you climb a tree, maybe you don't plant, you won't
07:50 kill yourself.
07:51 Because you know you go climb when rain falls, the tree will drop.
07:56 So when it's raining, no one is climbing the trees, which means the fruit often goes
08:01 rotten.
08:03 And thanks to climate change, the rainy season has been lasting longer, causing more damage.
08:09 This decreases the already low supply of palm fruits and raises the price of red palm oil.
08:15 In contrast, palm kernel oil plantations harvest on a massive scale and rely on heavy machinery
08:22 for the bulk of their production.
08:23 I work with the software for this thing.
08:28 Government, I don't see government come support me.
08:31 I don't get any support.
08:33 I'm outside the software with my children, with my wife, with my friends.
08:39 Our engine, our main engine, we don't get money to buy big one.
08:44 The one we give for us, guarantee say this one will be used in like five years, it won't
08:50 disturb us.
08:51 So now it's...
08:54 After enough oil has been collected in the large bowls underneath the press, workers
08:59 carefully scoop the orange-red liquid into other bowls and buckets.
09:06 The oil is poured into drums for a final boil.
09:11 After one hour, the fire is put out and the oil is left to cool off.
09:18 The finished oil is moved into buckets, then funnelled into jerry cans.
09:24 Deborah says some customers travel all the way from Lagos state, which is about five
09:28 hours away by car, to buy her red palm oil.
09:32 Some people think I will do more than 15 kegs, 30, 30 litres.
09:37 These kegs sell for $30 each.
09:41 Although the price can change depending on the supply of palm fruits.
09:45 I know they are pure.
09:46 I know they carry my oil, they go market.
09:47 I can sell them for my house, I get plenty of customers.
09:54 The price of red palm oil can also vary depending on location.
09:59 A four-litre bottle at a supermarket in a bigger city like Lagos can cost around $18,
10:06 making it the same price or even cheaper than some imported vegetable oils, thanks to Nigeria's
10:12 volatile exchange rates.
10:15 Meanwhile, the red palm oil that is exported outside of West Africa is exponentially more
10:22 expensive, ranging from $15 to $20 for one litre in the US.
10:28 And the cost may only be getting higher.
10:31 Cooking oil prices have been on the rise thanks to weather-related supply shortages in countries
10:35 like Argentina and Canada.
10:38 The Russian invasion of Ukraine also cut the world off from the region's supply of sunflower
10:43 oil, and led Indonesia to ban some exports of its palm oil.
10:49 All this raised the global price of cooking oils even higher.
10:53 As a result, the local cost of red palm oil in Nigeria has also increased.
10:58 But for many people, the price is worth the taste.
11:01 I believe in my own oil, it's better.
11:06 The price, at the expense of me, they don't tell me, don't go up more, more, more, more.
11:12 Because they work, not the issue.
11:13 [MUSIC]
11:23 [BLANK_AUDIO]