oil palm tree – Jonathan Robins

Oil Palm wins Agricultural History Society Award

Oil Palm: a Global History received the 2021 Henry A. Wallace award from the Agricultural History Society. The award recognizes the best book on agricultural history outside the United States published in 2021.

Illustrating oil palms

Who drew the first scientific illustration of an oil palm? Not this guy!

Palm oil and soap marketing

This image didn’t make the cut for Oil Palm: a Global History, but it’s remarkable for three reasons. First, it actually (or at least attempts to) depicts a West African person. Most Palmolive advertising pointed to a fictive Egyptian origin for palm oil, erasing West Africans from the commodity chain (see ad at bottom ofContinue reading “Palm oil and soap marketing”