AGRICULTURE (OIL PALM)

Agriculture is the production of food and goods through farming. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of human population, with the cultivation and production of edible crops and animals for food, creating food supplies that enabled the development of more densely populated societies. Agriculture compromise of a wide variety of specialties and techniques, including ways to expand the lands suitable for plant rising, by digging water-channels and other forms of irrigation. Cultivation of crops on arable land and the land for herding of livestock for agriculture. Modern agronomy, plant breeding, pesticides and fertilizers, and technological improvements have increased yields from cultivation, and at the same time, it caused widespread ecological damage and negative human health effects. Selective breeding and modern practices in animal husbandry such as intensive pig farming (and similar practices applied to the chicken) have increased the output of meat, but it also raised concerns about animal cruelty and the health effects of the antibiotics and other chemicals used in industrial meat production. Oil palm is part of agriculture. The oil palms comprise two species of the Arecaceae, or palm family. They are used in commercial agriculture in the production of palm oil. Mature trees are single-stemmed, and grow to 20 m tall. The leaves reach between 3-5 m long. A young tree produces about 30 leaves a year. Established trees produce 20 leaves a year over 10 years. The flowers are produced in dense clusters, with three sepals and three petals. The palm fruit takes five to six months to mature. Each fruit is made up of oily, fleshy outer layer with a single seed, kernel, also rich in oil. When ripe, each bunch of fruit weigh 40-50kg. The palm fruit is reddish and it grows in large bunches. Each fruit contains a palm kernel surrounded by a soft oily pulp. Oil is extracted from both the pulp of the fruit and the kernel. For every 100 kilograms of fruit bunches, typically 22 kilograms of palm oil and 1.6 kilograms of palm kernel oil can be extracted. For each hectare of oil palm,the annual production averages 10 tonnes of fruit, which yields 3,000 kg of pericarp oil, and 750 kg of seed kernels, which yield 250 kg of high quality palm kernel oil as well as 500 kg of kernel meal.