Sometimes one question captures an entire industry shift Recently, I had a conversation with a senior planter from Malaysia. More than 25 years in palm oil. He did not open with theory or assumptions. He asked one simple question: "Did you check the data? Is the trend going up or down?" That question stayed with me. Because in that one question, he captured exactly where agriculture is heading. Not toward dashboards. Not toward technology for its own sake. Toward evidence. To

Palm oil in Sri Lanka is often discussed as a policy failure, an environmental misstep, or a crop that never truly belonged here. The narrative is usually emotional and polarized—framed as a moral debate rather than an economic or operational one. In most discussions, palm oil is treated as an exception: an error that was eventually corrected. But when viewed through the lens of productivity, systems, and long-term competitiveness, palm oil tells a very different story. Not o