How to Use oil palm in a Sentence

oil palm

noun
  • Chimpanzees were given a choice of coula nuts and oil palm nuts.
    — Daryl Perry, USA TODAY, 27 June 2022
  • Neat rows of oil palm seedlings stretched toward the horizon.
    — Hannah Beech, New York Times, 29 June 2019
  • The oil palm plant grows best at ten degrees to the north and south of the equator.
    — Bill McKibben, The New Yorker, 28 Jan. 2021
  • The more fortunate are marooned on small islands of trees among oil palms.
    — Hannah Beech, New York Times, 29 June 2019
  • It's all been converted into oil palm, but I was not allowed to say it on camera.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 21 Apr. 2023
  • Between the towns there are rice fields, limestone outcroppings, and repeat patterns of oil palms that stretch as far as the eye can see.
    — Arati Menon, Condé Nast Traveler, 25 May 2024
  • Johnson wants to tell the world about wild oil palm and alternative production models.
    — Emma Reynolds, CNN, 26 Nov. 2019
  • Nor will vertical farms raise livestock or grow oil palms, which are mainly what people are clearing hardwood forests to make room for.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 2 June 2018
  • The tigers' habitats are shrinking because of oil palm, coffee and acacia plantations.
    — Kelly Murray, CNN, 9 July 2022
  • Much of their tropical rainforest homelands are being cleared to make way for oil palm plantations.
    — Ralph Steadman, Discover Magazine, 1 Mar. 2018
  • Much of their tropical rainforest homelands are being cleared to make way for oil palm plantations.
    — Ralph Steadman, Discover Magazine, 19 July 2018
  • Some was due to oil palm plantations, but mining was by far the dominant cause, Dethier says.
    — Bypaul Voosen, science.org, 11 Jan. 2023
  • The oil palms that developers plant in the scorched earth also fail to serve any of the ecosystem functions that the original forest did.
    — Zoë Schlanger, Quartz, 18 Sep. 2019
  • Other tropical oils—like coconut oil—have lower yields than oil palm and would have even greater impacts if cultivated on the same scale.
    — James Dinneen, Wired, 8 Jan. 2022
  • Here, in Indonesia, oil palm plantations have been one of the largest drivers of deforestation in the last decade.
    — Kelli Bender, PEOPLE.com, 1 Aug. 2019
  • But Roucoux worries that someday oil palm harvesters or other farmers will target the area for development.
    — Daniel Grossman, Scientific American, 5 Feb. 2020
  • The rest live in the southern states of peninsular Malaysia, where forests are quickly being converted to oil palm plantations.
    — Rachel Nuwer, National Geographic, 22 June 2020
  • In Borneo, for instance, oil palm cultivation has accounted for more than half of all deforestation over the past two decades.
    — James Dinneen, Wired, 8 Jan. 2022
  • But large industries producing crude oil, rice, and oil palm have displaced many ranches, disrupting the heritage of local llaneros, or people of the plains.
    — Nathalia Angarita, The Christian Science Monitor, 21 Mar. 2022
  • The Pasoh Forest, however, is surrounded on three sides by oil palm plantations.
    — National Geographic, 21 Dec. 2017
  • Unfortunately, thousands of peatlands are sometimes cleared for oil palm plantations.
    — Simi Thambi​, Forbes, 16 Feb. 2024
  • Swathes of the world’s forests, including many that are ancient and endangered, have been transformed into grassland to raise livestock or grow cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber and soy.
    — Jasmin Malik Chua, Sourcing Journal, 24 Sep. 2025
  • Orangutans are critically endangered because of habitat loss driven by logging and oil palm plantations.
    — Kelli Bender, PEOPLE.com, 18 Apr. 2022
  • Wetlands continue to be destroyed in Southeast Asia and the Congo region of Africa, mainly to plant oil palm.
    — National Geographic, 26 Mar. 2018
  • The organization also fights in court, including a lawsuit against an oil palm company that resulted in a $26 million fine.
    — Eduardo Garcia, Forbes.com, 18 Sep. 2025
  • Yet surging cultivation of oil palm trees is linked to burning of tropical rainforests and the destruction of wildlife habitats in Southeast Asia.
    — Washington Post, 16 Dec. 2019
  • Palm oil is a controversial cooking oil, as global demand is causing producers in Africa to clear large areas of tropical forests to make room for oil palm plantations.
    — Ian Burke, Saveur, 10 Oct. 2018
  • Torrential downpours break out several times during a journey that takes us past numerous oil palm plantations and deforested jungle.
    — Stefan Lovgren, National Geographic, 24 Dec. 2019
  • Some scientists fear that this region in particular could be targeted for widespread clearing and replacement with industrial oil palm.
    — National Geographic, 1 Oct. 2019
  • Currently, Southeast Asia is the oil palm hotspot, and the deforestation and ensuing damage in the region have been well publicized.
    — Cathleen O'Grady, Ars Technica, 17 Aug. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'oil palm.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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