Spurred by income and population growth in developing countries-as well as rapidly expanding food processing industries in Asia and other developing areas-the global growth in consumption of vegetable oils is outpacing that of most other agricultural products. Consumption of vegetable oils worldwide grew at an average annual rate of 4.2 percent over the past decade. Consumption of vegetable oils also was buoyed by relatively low prices during the late 1980's. Prices have been held in check by high U.S. soybean oil stocks and abundant world supplies of other oils, particularly palm and rapeseed oil