Oil palm plantation

I had a chance to read Mr. Pinaki Roy's Article titled "Oil palm plantation comes under criticism" which was published in the DS of August 8, 2008.
The negative views expressed in the said article may not be supported by basic facts of oil palm cultivation. As such I would like to put forward some points on the issue.
First of all, it may be said that the project as mentioned in the article which was taken up by the then government in the early 80's cannot be considered an "example of failure" due to natural causes like unfavourable land and climatic conditions. If we at all consider the project to be a failure, we must make ourselves responsible, and not the soil and climate, wild elephants, rodents, porcupines etc. The fact is that no adequate measure could be taken in those days by the department concerned in order to protect the young plants from wild animal attacks due to shortage of manpower and logistics, as an official of the department mentioned.
Secondly, those plants which could luckily escape extinction in the hostile environment they were put into, have become big trees now. Many of them are bearing fruits in Satchhari forest. Unfortunately, no follow up technical procedure was adopted and no study was conducted towards knowing behaviours of the plants in regard to growth, fertility, yield and many other aspects associated with the subject. Even it may be surprising to know that no fertiliser is being applied to those ill-fated trees for their entire life span of about 30 years. But in spite of our negligence the threes look quite healthy and bearing fruits. Is this not a success?
Oil palm trees are not to be treated as wild trees. These need to be considered as a modern crop. They need a lot of care. But possibly no such care was taken, but the trees are still alive in different places. In such a situation how can we use the term "failure" ?
As regards the suggestion of "Most of the experts" to go for cultivation of other oil seeds like mustard, groundnut, sunflower and soybean instead of oil palm, this needs to be mentioned that this suggestion cannot be a favourable choice for us as these crops occupy large areas of paddy/vegetable producing land. Possibly, we cannot afford to go by such choice in view of food-grain shortage in the country nowadays. Moreover, yield of these crops is poorer compared to that of oil palm.
Let us go back to Satchhari again. "Poor quality of fruits" in Satchhari forest does not represent the truth. As a matter of fact, fruit quality of palm is very good.
Lastly, we should try out best to learn the subject and cultivation of oil palm should be encouraged for making our country self sufficient in edible oil in near future.