Le cocotier et le palmier à huile en Amérique

Abstract

The Coconut and the Palm-oil Trees in the Americas. Tropical America, especially the immense Amazonian basin and its adjacent lands, is the original home of various palm trees yielding oil-bearing fruit. But the two most important, from the economic point of view, the coconut ant the palm-oil trees, are of foreign origin. Those who believe that these two trees are indigenous to the Americas are at present contradicted by specialists, convinced of the African origin of the former, and the origin in Southeast Asia and insular Pacific for the latter. The coconut tree, after its discovery by Europeans, very quickly adorned the tropical and subtropical coastlines of the Americas, where it was for a long time a " foodstuff " source for its water and the pulp of its fruit. At the end of the 19th century, according to the sites, different uses for coconut groves appeared, or the same uses were continued. While the large plantations of Northeast Brazil and often those of the Carribbean Islands remained above all orchards, the two Mexican coasts specialized in the production of copra, for which the country today is the fourth world producer. Some of the Antillean Islands -Jamaica, Trinidad, and the Dominican Republic -employ the two growth purposes. The American coconut groves are far from being models of growth and of productivity. Ocean storms and illnesses associated with the "large coconut grove " penalize the plantations a lot, and in many of them today the dwarf coconut tree of Malaysia is being introduced. The palm-oil tree came from Africa to Bahia, Brazil, and, hopping from island to island, spread to the North. Its only interest for a long time was only for the natural palm grove ofReconcavo, based on the Benin model. It was only in the 1920s that the United States banana companies, confronted by the terrible Panamanian disease that decimated their plantations, began to plant the first palm tree groves on the edges of the devastated fields, in particular in Honduras and Costa Rica. Beginning in the 1960s, the Andes countries, from Peru to Venezuela, very short of fats and wishing to undertake further colonization, managed with the aid of private and para-governmental companies to set up "palm tree plans ", associating industrial as well as village plantations. Columbia is the best example here. As for Brazil, its participation was limited ; the palm tree grove of Bahia was " improved " and a few other plantations were added. Perimeters were opened near Belem and Fortaleza, but nearby immense oil resources of wild "babassu" in Piaui and Maranhao are available. It can be thought that in view of the social troubles in the Andean coun¬ tries and the competition engendered by the growth of the world-wide economy which makes more and more accessible the oils produced from cotton and soja beans in Brazil and in the United States, and palm oil from Malaysia, that there will be at least a pause in the continued development of palm tree plantations.