Oil palm is the highest edible oil yielding plant, with a per hectare yield of 4 to 5 tons of crude palm oil as against a yield of 0.6 to 1 ton per hectare for Indian traditional oil crops such as Ground Nut, Gingelly, Sunflower, Cocoa Nut, Castor etc.

Government started encouraging Palm Oil crop in India during 1980s with the objective of attaining self-sustenance in edible oil production and reduce foreign exchange spending for import of edible oil in huge quantities.

Initially, the Government identified 10 lakh hectares of land for Palm Oil cultivation which has now expanded to more than 15 lakh hectares spanning across various Southern and North Eastern States of India.

Andhra Pradesh is the major Oil Palm growing State in India with a production capacity of 20 lakh tons while other States such as Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Assam, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh etc. together produce another 5 lakh tons.

The National Mission for Edible Oils – Oil Palm

In view of the growing domestic demand for edible oils, NMEO-OP has been approved with a total outlay of Rs 11,040 crore. This will bring an additional area of 6.5 lakh hectare under Oil Palm plantation with 3.28 lakh hectare in the north-eastern states and 3.22 in the rest of India in the next 5 years. The major focus of the Mission is to provide Viability Prices of fresh fruit bunches (FFBs) to the farmers linked with assured procurement by industry with a simpler price fixing  formula. The Central Government will compensate farmers through a viability gap payment if price paid by industry is below the viability price upto October, 2037.