Palm kernel and the colonial project

Our dependency on imported palm kernel expeller (PKE) for animal feed is hurting the communities and environment where it’s grown, writes Catherine Delahunty.

 

Some years ago, when I was an MP, I got chatting to the driver of a rural shuttle van that was taking me to the nearest airport. He had a farming background, and we started talking about winter feed for stock, specifically palm kernel expeller (PKE). I told him I was against importing PKE from Indonesia and occupied West Papua.

PKE is a by-product of palm oil production and is widely used for cattle feed. But it comes at the expense of the rainforests and the Indigenous communities who live there. People and animals lose their homes so we can feed our cows. At the time, New Zealand was the largest importer of this animal feed in the world (we’re now second, after Japan).

I told the driver that I felt we had a responsibility to consider the damage we were helping to cause, especially in West Papua.

He replied that he didn’t really care. And he didn’t think the farming community cared, either. He’d never heard of West Papua, and reckoned most people hadn’t either.

He was right, of course.

We’re importing over 2 million tonnes of PKE into this country annually. But while we’re happy to extol the superiority of our food systems, we show little concern for where our resources come from.

We ignore the fact that our dependency on imported PKE is hurting the environment and communities where it’s grown. It’s another form of colonisation: outsourcing environmental harm for the sake of cheap animal feed.

The standard defence to this is that PKE is a byproduct of palm oil plantations, so we might as well use it rather than let it go to waste. But that’s an ethically shaky justification.

The same palm oil industry that produces PKE is the subject of global boycotts. The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) and more than 90 Indigenous groups in West Papua have called for boycotts of products like Kit Kat, Smarties, Aero chocolate, Pantene and Herbal Essences shampoo.

It’s hard to know exactly which products come from which palm oil plantation. They might be in Sumatra in Indonesia or in West Papua. But we do know that vast monoculture palm plantations have replaced forests that once supported people, wildlife and biodiversity.

In West Papua’s Merauke region, the Tanah Merah project aims to create 140,000 acres of palm oil plantations. Further south, the Indonesian government plans to convert two million hectares into sugar and bioethanol plantations.

They want these occupied lands to become the “food barn” for their country — a way to turn West Papua into an agricultural hub that exports rather than imports food.

But it’s a disaster in the making for the climate, biodiversity, and Indigenous communities.

I didn’t even know what PKE was for a long time. Someone pointed to the plastic-covered piles in the paddocks and told me that they came from a country that I knew was under occupation, and where endangered tree species like kwila were being cut down for our decks and barbecues.

Then there was the 2010 news story about a dead monkey found in a batch of PKE in the Bay of Plenty. I still think about that monkey.

And I think, too, about the Palmolive soap and shampoo that I grew up with. I used to imagine that they came from some far-off, unnamed country, where the palm trees gently gave up their oil. But there’s nothing gentle about it. It’s an environmental disaster fuelling climate change, and we’ve built our dairy system on it.

PKE is now the greatest imported feed for New Zealand’s dairy cows. Because it affects milk quality, Fonterra requires farmers to limit daily consumption to 3 kilos per cow.

But it’s not just dairy farmers: all consumers are part of the palm oil and PKE supply chain.

Worse still are the colonial impacts in West Papua that we never even register.

Not registering our impact on stolen land and resources is an old habit. The western capitalist system has long depended on the stolen labour and resources of others, dating back to the papal bulls of the 1400s that justified the “doctrine of discovery”.

Since colonisation, our farming systems have relied on other people’s lands and natural resources, like phosphate from Nauru and the Sahara. But it came at great cost to those communities and their environments.

One wake-up call for me was watching a film by my West Papuan colleague Wensislaus Fatubun about his ancestral lands in Merauke. The film shows the people whose identity is tied to the sago palm being forced to watch their food source and way of life destroyed. Their forests, including the sago palms, are being torn down and replaced by vast palm oil plantations. Their deep relationship with the land is being severed.

West Papuans are crystal clear: their forests are the essential lungs of this hemisphere. Until recently, they were among the last remaining ecosystems absorbing huge amounts of carbon.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the spread of monoculture plantations — palm oil, sugar cane and rice — is the end of their world as they know it. Indonesia’s last two presidents have backed this “food barn” agenda with military force.

But our responsibility here in Aotearoa sits at the other end of the supply chain.

In April, Greenpeace Aotearoa protested at Fonterra’s feedstore at the Port of Taranaki, blocking a shipment of PKE from Indonesia and, by default, West Papua.

Fonterra’s response focused on the health and safety risks of the protest, but they also said they’d be asking suppliers for proof that the PKE met their “No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation” standards.

That’s a nice-sounding policy, but there is no guarantee of any of this. And if they can’t be confident of ethical supply, what then?

Do farmers really need PKE? If your only goal is to produce more milk from more cows, then yes. But I’ve talked with dairy farmers doing it differently. A growing number are focusing on water quality, smaller herds, and diverse pasture systems. Many iwi-owned farms are leading this shift. But it’s a hard call, especially when the milk price is so high.

Where’s the incentive to change? It won’t come from within a system that refuses to see the colonial violence it relies on. But that could change if global buyers start demanding low-emissions farming that doesn’t source its PKE from devastated rainforests — and if the cheap PKE starts drying up.

The agricultural experts I talk to say that tweaking animal feed won’t be enough. We need a whole new agricultural model — one that sustains soils, water, and communities. That favours mixed farming rather than a monoculture. After all, monocultures, be they human or plant-based, are fragile and oppressive.

Relying on the financial incentives of capitalism to fix the climate crisis is like trusting wolves to nurture sheep. Of course, agriculture is essential. But it needs urgent, systemic change. Not least because of what our dairy industry is doing to the people of West Papua.

But that’s a hard message to spread when most people here can’t even find West Papua on a map. Indonesia blocks international journalists and maintains a violent occupation. And here in Aotearoa, we mostly turn away, maintaining an unrelenting disinterest in the lives of people across Te Moana nui a Kiwa.

Too often, we dehumanise the people of this region. Especially those from so-called “Melanesia”. Places like Papua New Guinea are not our go-to holiday destinations.  And their communities in Aotearoa are small and largely invisible, especially to Pākehā.

Of course, being visible, like the Sāmoans, Tongans and Niueans, doesn’t guarantee that you’re treated fairly, or your languages and contributions are respected. But at least people have heard of you.

The lack of curiosity and solidarity with our Pacific neighbours is just another version of what tangata whenua have long experienced here, but hapū and iwi across these motu keep resisting and regenerating.

PKE and palm oil are part of the colonising of our region — they represent the colonial oppression of our neighbours.

Replacing these products will take time and effort. But, as the great African American writer James Baldwin said: “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

 

Catherine Delahunty is a Pākehā activist in environmental, social justice, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi issues. She is a writer and a tutor on social change issues, and a grandmother. Catherine was a Green MP for nine years and lives in Hauraki.

E-Tangata, 2025