科学美国人60秒 SSS 2014-10-07

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Here is good news bad news story. Scientists are able to dramatically increase yields of oil palm trees axxx the global market. Oil palm trees grow in tropic so that means more profit for less land helping¹ to protect tropical farms. Good news, right? But in an article of Journal of Science, research shows how the increase of yield could in fact lead to even more tropical destruction because as the value of oil palm tree planting increases, farmers could want to plant even greater track of land which is bad news. Also a future increase of supply could lead to decreases of price. So palm oil will out compete with rapeseed oil, which comes from Canada. It will lead to a higher demand for palm oil, which is worse news. In addition, current low yield and production cost means it is not planted as much as in Africa and South America. But higher yields will attract planters in these regions, leading to more tropical farms destruction. To prevent these developments, the researchers and policy makers² need to be aware of and plan for the unintended and negative consequences of technical advances, which would be good news.

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