**4. Nexus between oil palm and food security: theoretical perspectives and empirical evidences**

Some researchers have expressed a direct relationship between palm oil production and food insecurity. For instance, [26], argues that palm oil production creates food insecurity in a direct way for local communities, especially rural and indigenous communities whenever government allocates to private plantation firms the land on which such communities depend on for their food and livelihood. Kimbowa [25] reported that Buvuma – Oil Palm Uganda Limited-BOPUL, a subsidiary of Oil Palm Uganda Limited and Bidco Uganda Limited in Kalangala arranged to acquire from the local communities 6, 500 hectares of land for oil palm cultivation while the out-growers of the companies will use 3, 500 hectares and this affected food

#### *Oil Palm (*Elaeis guineensis*) Cultivation and Food Security in the Tropical World DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98486*

production. Since their compensation in 2012, most of the residents have failed to secure alternative land for settlement and food production. In Nigeria, the Friends of the Earth also claimed that the allocation of agricultural land by the Cross River State Government to Wilmar International for the development of oil palm nucleus estates robbed the local communities of their land for arable crop production thereby promoting food insecurity in the affected communities.

Many plantation farmers are known to heavily depend on agricultural cash income to purchase adequately diverse foods [18, 19], thereby making them vulnerable to substantial income and price shocks. Furthermore, focusing on perennial and non-food commercial crops like oil palm that do not directly add to household dietary diversity through own consumption, is likely to encourage competition for land with other food crops which could negatively affect food availability and food prices [20].

A link between oil palm cultivation and food security has been established through some empirical studies. Using panel farm household data from Jambi province on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, [24] examined the effects of oil palm adoption on dietary diversity, quantities of fruits and vegetables consumed calories, and food expenditure. Endogenous switching regression was applied to control for selection bias and to obtain counterfactual outcomes. Panel logit regression was also used to estimate the impact of oil palm adoption on dichotomous variables of household's diets, indicating whether or not the diet met the minimum adequacy level of fruits and vegetables consumed as well as intake of calorie, iron, zinc, vitamin A, and the average of the three micronutrients. Regardless of the diet indicator, oil palm adoption was found to have statistically significant and positive effects, indicating that oil palm cultivation leads to higher food and micronutrient adequacy in general. On an average, the adoption of oil palm increases the probability of consuming fruits and vegetables by 33.6%, calorie adequacy by 38.6%, iron adequacy by 36.4%, zinc adequacy by 54.9%, vitamin A adequacy by 33.1%, and average adequacy of the three micronutrients by 35%. Together, with the results from the endogenous switching regression, it was deduced that oil palm adoption improves the diets of farm households in the tropics, whether they belong to the migrants or the local communities. Hence, the nutritional impact might justify why farm households in the tropical region are rapidly expanding oil palm cultivation. Moreover, several socioeconomic, farm, and demographic factors impact oil palm adoption and, at the same time, shape the diversity and adequacy of diets in those households. The study therefore supports the idea that adopting a perennial and non-food commercial crop like oil palm does not worsen dietary quality and diversity in farm household. Rather land-use change through oil palm adoption significantly improves the diets of farm households in the tropics.

An exploratory study was also carried out by [6] to assess the food security outcomes of smallholder-based oil palm and rubber production at the household level in the forest region of Guinea using six standardized metrics of food security. The selected metrics covered different aspects of food security related to diet diversity, perceptions of hunger and coping behaviors in the face of food scarcity. Households involved in industrial crop production were compared with households that only grow food crops under subsistence conditions, using statistical tools like Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Endogenous Treatment Effect Regression (ETER). The results obtained are mixed. Both oil palm and rubber have significantly lower levels of diet diversity (Food Consumption Score, FCS) than subsistence farmers. However, industrial crop smallholders have lower levels of perception of hunger compared to subsistence farmers, with oil palm farmers having significantly better values than other groups. Both the PSM and ETER analyses suggest that involvement in industrial crop production decreases food security in terms of diet

diversity, but when it comes to perception of hunger, the involvement of oil palm production improves food security. The results of the ETER regarding involvement in oil palm production and coping strategy index were statistically significant and therefore suggest that involvement in industrial crop production improves coping strategy index thereby enhancing food security. Overall, results show that oil palm and rubber smallholders perform better than subsistence farmers on metrics that capture perceptions of hunger and coping behaviors. However, involvement in oil palm and rubber production reduces the levels of food security metrics that use shorter time scales and measure food diversity. This implies that involvement in industrial crop production does not enhance consistently food security across all metrics. This could be explained to arise from the strong sense of security that steady and higher income provides across time (food stability), that outweighs the shortcomings on diet diversity (food utilization).

Furthermore, [27] established a causal relationship between oil palm cultivation and farmers' household food security. Their study applied OLS and quantile regression models to household data in Indonesia to find the socio-economic factors that influence farmers' food expenditure and calorie intake, and to estimate the effect of oil palm expansion on food security across quantiles. The study indicated a statistically significant influence of the income from oil palm expansion on calorie intake. The study further showed that expansions of oil palm cultivated area, resulting in more crop income, could lead farmers to consume more nutritious food, but the food share in the household budget decreases, which is consistent with Engel's law. This is in consonant with the work of [5] who found that expansion of oil palm plantation by smallholder farmers positively affected nutritious food intake, particularly at the mid to upper tail of the expenditure distribution, implying that households in such categories spend their income to not only satisfy their basic calorie needs, but also consider the nutrient intake quantities in their daily diets.
