Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/318

 248 FACTS ABOUT CROP TREES

commercial possibilities. Their reports sounded almost too good to be true, so this lord of soap checked up their accounts with personal journeys. As a result he established large plantations of oil palms in western Africa. This was very easy to do, for the trees stand many to the acre over large areas of wild forest. The trade shot up, and Europe now imports hundreds of thousands of tons of palm kernels and palm oil.' This industry has sprung up almost as quickly as the rubber industry.

Oil palm gives three distinct kinds of oils:

1. The edible oil boiled from the fruit.

2. The inedible oil pressed from the fruit.

3. The oil of the kernel. The kernel has long been extracted from the nut by the African women working with two stones. A cracking machine now does the work.

Meanwhile, this tree is running wild in Brazil, having been brought there by the early importations of negro slaves. However. Brazil is not solely dependent upon the African oil palm, for it has one of its own, babassu, growing wild over a large area about the latitude 5° south and now in the process of being introduced into commerce.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE COCONUT

The ancient and well-known coconut with its rich oil and myriad uses need not be here expanded except to point out one fact that may revolutionize the economics of almost any kind of vegetable oil. Chemical researches have recently turned the strong liquid coconut oil into a sweet-flavored tallow-like substance which now graces millions of European and some American tables in place of the more expensive butter.

In 1911, the United Kingdom imported 25,000 tons of palm kernels. In

1919 it was 317,000 tons. In 1926 Europe imported over half a million tons of kernels,