00:00 Today, Victor is climbing trees up to 40 feet high, equipped with a homemade axe, a rope
00:09 and his own bare feet, which he's using to reach something very valuable, the fruits
00:17 that'll be turned into red palm oil.
00:22 Standard palm oil, or palm kernel oil, is known for being quite cheap, but red palm
00:27 oil can cost three times as much.
00:30 When it's shipped to the US or the UK, it can sell for even more, up to $20 for a single
00:37 litre.
00:38 "Wherever the seed passes, it falls.
00:39 You know, the seeds will clump up."
00:42 Workers like Victor face snakes and the risk of falling just to harvest this valuable fruit.
00:49 But what makes red palm oil different from palm oil, and what exactly makes it so expensive?
01:04 This is what palm oil looks like.
01:07 Our local palm oil.
01:08 I actually prefer to cook with red palm oil because of the taste.
01:13 Red palm oil has a mildly floral flavour and a buttery texture.
01:17 Palm oil generally is used for our local food.
01:21 All the time, all the time, all the time.
01:29 Here in Undo State, Nigeria, making this local favourite is a labour-intensive and artisanal
01:35 process.
01:36 Thousands of fleshy palm fruits are transformed into yellow-brown sludge and then red-orange
01:43 oil.
01:44 Over the course of a week, it all starts on oil palm plantations like this one in the
01:50 village of Ayi.
01:52 Every few weeks, expert climbers are called in to harvest the palm husks.
01:58 The trees here can be as high as 60 feet.
02:02 Climbers like Victor don't wear any protective gear, relying on just handmade harnesses and
02:08 axes to help them up the palm trees.
02:20 Victor makes new ropes with fresh palm fibres whenever he feels his current one isn't
02:25 strong or tight enough.
02:28 This is important because old rope can become brittle and snap.
02:33 And sometimes, some people, they use their life.
02:38 See my rope now.
02:39 If I had other people, they would see they use it.
02:41 Don't sit on it, don't hold, and don't break.
02:44 You are the climb.
02:45 Gentle, gentle, no rush.
02:46 Use my axe.
02:47 Go hook up for your hitch.
02:51 It takes three years for oil palm trees to bear fruit.
02:55 But once they do, they can be harvested year round.
03:04 Sometimes they cut 200.
03:05 Every person wants to learn this work.
03:06 I have to teach them everywhere.
03:07 All this, I know will grow up.
03:08 It will be cleaner than us.
03:09 Now, we are going to cut it now.
03:10 The
03:31 biggest obstacle Victor faces once he's climbing is snakes.
03:42 The risk of falling has led some workers to stop climbing and instead help with collecting
03:46 the palm husks from the safety of the ground.
03:49 I need to climb trees.
03:51 Before, I used to climb these bengal.
03:54 These bengal are so dangerous.
03:56 If you climb them, if you go there, you will see snake for up.
04:10 It's very difficult to separate the fresh fruit from the thick, spiky palm husks.
04:19 So they're left out to dry.
04:21 This time also allows the fruit to ferment, which elevates the oil's flavor.
04:27 After three or four days, the fruits are ready to be dehusked.
04:32 Randy and other workers use axes to break the husks and sift the fruits to separate
04:39 them from dirt.
04:47 They collect the fruit in large sacks and transport it to a processing site in the nearby
04:57 village of Ileze.
05:04 Randy delivers the palm fruits to his wife, Deborah, who is one of the many workers toiling
05:10 away to transform the fruits into red palm oil.
05:19 The sacks of fruit are dumped into buckets and large drums.
05:36 Water is added to the drums to boil the fruit.
05:55 After one hour, the fruit is ready to be drained and taken to the miller.
06:00 Inside this drum, it boils.
06:06 The water doesn't change.
06:09 What they used to do before, if they didn't cut the fruit, they wouldn't pick and finish.
06:15 We don't do this by ourselves.
06:18 We don't carry the mills.
06:20 If they don't cook and finish, they go to the market and kill the fruit.
06:26 But the mill still involves a significant amount of labor as someone must manually load
06:31 and empty the fruit.
06:42 After the mill, it's time for another recently acquired machine, a hydraulic press.
06:52 The fruit, which has been milled into a pulp, is pressed to release its oil.
07:00 No kernel oil is released here because that would require the seeds to be dried and cracked.
07:07 Some locals do produce kernel oil, but since it's more difficult to make without special
07:11 machinery, it's not as common.
07:15 While oil palms originated in West Africa, colonization led to the rapid expansion of
07:20 oil palm plantations throughout Southeast Asia.
07:24 Eventually, Southeast Asia took over the global palm oil industry, and as other oils also
07:29 grew in popularity, West Africa never quite caught up.
07:34 West Africa's rainy season, which typically lasts from May to October, is also an ongoing
07:40 issue.
07:41 Rainy season, if rain falls, if you climb a tree, maybe you don't plant, you won't
07:50 kill yourself.
07:51 Because you know you go climb when rain falls, the tree will drop.
07:56 So when it's raining, no one is climbing the trees, which means the fruit often goes
08:01 rotten.
08:03 And thanks to climate change, the rainy season has been lasting longer, causing more damage.
08:09 This decreases the already low supply of palm fruits and raises the price of red palm oil.
08:15 In contrast, palm kernel oil plantations harvest on a massive scale and rely on heavy machinery
08:22 for the bulk of their production.
08:23 I work with the software for this thing.
08:28 Government, I don't see government come support me.
08:31 I don't get any support.
08:33 I'm outside the software with my children, with my wife, with my friends.
08:39 Our engine, our main engine, we don't get money to buy big one.
08:44 The one we give for us, guarantee say this one will be used in like five years, it won't
08:50 disturb us.
08:51 So now it's...
08:54 After enough oil has been collected in the large bowls underneath the press, workers
08:59 carefully scoop the orange-red liquid into other bowls and buckets.
09:06 The oil is poured into drums for a final boil.
09:11 After one hour, the fire is put out and the oil is left to cool off.
09:18 The finished oil is moved into buckets, then funnelled into jerry cans.
09:24 Deborah says some customers travel all the way from Lagos state, which is about five
09:28 hours away by car, to buy her red palm oil.
09:32 Some people think I will do more than 15 kegs, 30, 30 litres.
09:37 These kegs sell for $30 each.
09:41 Although the price can change depending on the supply of palm fruits.
09:45 I know they are pure.
09:46 I know they carry my oil, they go market.
09:47 I can sell them for my house, I get plenty of customers.
09:54 The price of red palm oil can also vary depending on location.
09:59 A four-litre bottle at a supermarket in a bigger city like Lagos can cost around $18,
10:06 making it the same price or even cheaper than some imported vegetable oils, thanks to Nigeria's
10:12 volatile exchange rates.
10:15 Meanwhile, the red palm oil that is exported outside of West Africa is exponentially more
10:22 expensive, ranging from $15 to $20 for one litre in the US.
10:28 And the cost may only be getting higher.
10:31 Cooking oil prices have been on the rise thanks to weather-related supply shortages in countries
10:35 like Argentina and Canada.
10:38 The Russian invasion of Ukraine also cut the world off from the region's supply of sunflower
10:43 oil, and led Indonesia to ban some exports of its palm oil.
10:49 All this raised the global price of cooking oils even higher.
10:53 As a result, the local cost of red palm oil in Nigeria has also increased.
10:58 But for many people, the price is worth the taste.
11:01 I believe in my own oil, it's better.
11:06 The price, at the expense of me, they don't tell me, don't go up more, more, more, more.
11:12 Because they work, not the issue.
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