Caribbean & Central America - May 2012 (ISSN 1741-4458)

A 1992 Agricultural Modernization Law accelerated land titling and altered the structure of land co-ops formed in the 1960s. The law permitted cooperative members to break up their holdings into small personal plots that could be sold. After an agreement with the European Union (EU) to increase Honduras's banana quota to the EU, many of the smaller banana farmers sold off these plots to the large multinational banana companies, which were seeking additional land in anticipation of increased European demand. In recent years, palm oil, now the world’s most used vegetable oil, has taken over from bananas as the most popular crop in northern Honduras, with an estimated 200,000 producers growing the high yield crop on 150,000 hectares in 2011, making Honduras the third largest producer in the region after Colombia (with 600,000 hectares planted) and Ecuador (400,000). Sales of palm oil from Honduras were valued at an estimated US$110.7m in 2011. India and China are the main global customers. Crude palm oil was trading at US$1,370 /metric ton in March.

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