Organic palm oil? Organic soya?

Yeah. Unless I specifically knew otherwise, I would assume that "organic" means "grown without pesticides or possibly artificial fertilizers, but still on top of what was very recently a rainforest." I would avoid it.

It entirely depends on the standard in question. What's the accreditation? Does the marge list by what standard the marge is rated? In the US there's three levels of organic certification, for a start, and different countries have different standards, so depending on where it was produced there's going to be different standards at play. Honestly, the way the food production chain works, and how hard it is to track the origin of any one ingredient, I'd skip anything with palm oil in it altogether. It's entirely possible to produce organic food unethically, as cromagnon mentions above. Organic just means grown without synthetic inputs. I'd actually go with olive oil based spreads if I were you. Olive oil is not the sort of thing you can grow from a quick cut-and-burn field, as it takes years for the plant to mature enough to bear fruit. Odds are good where you are that you'll wind up with a mostly Mediterranean sourced food product.

The rules for organic certification for Switzerland http://www.bioactualites.ch/fr/les-directives-bio.html (in French but there's a German and Italian version too). Since palm and soy oil are not produced there you may look at the importation manual. In any case, organic soybean oil available in Switzerland is more likely to come from producers based in Europe (France, Spain and Italy) where organic farming is strictly regulated. Organic palm oil mostly comes from Colombia, where regulations are different, and http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2012/11/28/ces-produits-bio-qui-contiennet-de-huile-de-palme_n_2204816.html.

Please bear in mind that "organic" does not mean "no pesticides, fungicides, or other -cides". There is no such thing as a farmer who doesn't use them. It simply means that the pesticides and other such treatments are "natural". For example, http://www.pan-uk.org/pestnews/Actives/rotenone.htm is a permissible organic pesticide under EU regulation.

From what I have heard there is pretty much no such thing as environmentally friendly palm oil. Some of it is less awful, but it's all pretty much grown in cleared rainforest.

Please bear in mind that "organic" does not mean "no pesticides, fungicides, or other -cides". There is no such thing as a farmer who doesn't use them. That's not true. I worked at an organic farm in the US, and we didn't use any -cides, only fertilizers and other healthy soil methods, as well as physical methods for retarding weeds/pests, such as covering plots with sheets. This was a ~10-acre farm, so I assume likelihood of such decreases with size, but it's not categorically true that all farmers use pesticides/herbicides, either natural or otherwise.

Thank you all for the answers. cromagnon, that was what I expected to hear, really. I'm not really a believer in organic farming and don't usually go out of my way to buy organic foods, but I suppose I was hoping that by some miracle, the organic certification on palm oil was based on the wider effect of the farming, not just the immediate techniques used. Oh well. elgilito, your links are very helpful. Luckily for me, the supermarkets here are very keen on organic food and even the own-brand soya milk and tofu are organic. They don't all state the country of origin but when they do, it's often Italy. I will write to Provamel (the manufacturer of the margarine I bought) and ask them about the origin of their palm oil, mostly because I'm annoyed that they have lots of information on their website about where their soya comes from and nothing at all about palm oil. I'll just avoid that marge in the future, though.