Plummeting prices forced Asnawi to close his three-year-old oil palm fruit transportation business in the Indonesian province of Jambi two weeks ago.

“In August, the [palm oil] factories were paying me Rp1,800 ($0.16, €0.13, £0.10) a kilogramme of fresh fruit, which was four times my costs,” he said. “By the middle of October we were only getting Rp625 a kilogramme. The margin was so thin, I decided it wasn’t worth the risk.”