The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) announced on 26 February that its Latin American members had produced 1.5M tonnes of Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO).
The figure was reached in February after four new grower companies received certification and added 160,000 tonnes of CSPO to help the region reach the 1.5M tonnes total.
A total of 31 certified growers from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico produced the region’s CSPO output from over 420,500ha of certified land.
“Their collaboration has created an enabling environment to make the production of sustainable palm oil the norm in the region,” said RSPO CEO Beverley Postma.
“Latin America can serve as a blueprint for other newer frontiers of palm oil production in how to balance the competing needs of development with the imperative for environmental and human rights protections.”
The hard work of schemed smallholders in the region had also helped the area achieve the milestone, the RSPO said. A total of 17% of the Latin America CSPO now came from smallholders in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala and Honduras where more than 101,000ha were now RSPO-certified.
