InfoSAWIT, JAMBI – Chairman of Persatuan Organisasi Petani Sawit Indonesia (POPSI), Pahala Sibuea mentioned that it is urgent to optimize smallholders’ income when many still insist sustainability challenges. He also said that it needs good cooperation among stakeholders namely between government and the smallholders for they are still not taken care.
Issue management needs good and transparent collaboration to make sure that sustainability really happens in palm oil industries. “The cooperation between smallholders and companies faced the same thing and the smallholders thought that the existing cooperation is unclear,” he said in the 3rd Indonesia Palm Oil Smallholder Conference and Expo (IPOSC) with the theme “Optimalisasi Sawit Rakyat Sebagai Penghasil Devisa di Pusaran Tata Kelola Sawit Berkelanjutan”, that InfoSAWIT attended, Tuesday (28/11/2023) in Jambi.
He also told that the 3rd IPOSC was attended by about 300 smallholders from 10 associations in Indonesia, such as from West Kalimantan Barat, South Kalimantan, Lampung, Jambi, West Sumatera, and North Sumatera.
"The event was important to get platform for smallholders to share their knowledge, experiences, and get the same solution to face the dynamic in palm oil industries,” Sibuea said.
Chairman of POPSI Developer, Gamal Nasir said that issue about smallholders’ plantations in lower productivity would be the focus to develop upstream sector. “The key to escalate smallholders’ income is to escalate their plantation productivity,” he said.
It would directly deliver impact to the smallholders’ welfare. For the next, he also encouraged the smallholders to get shares in palm oil mill. “After having shares in palm oil mill, they would also escalate their income,” Nasir said.
Though it is not the obligation to construct their own palm oil mill, having share in it would deliver bigger access to profits from the fresh fruit bunch was processed.
He also saw the better future for the smallholders if a regulation is published that supports mill share for the smallholders. But he emphasized that this should be maintained in partnership principles between the smallholders and industry (ies).
“The government needs to publish a regulation that delivers chances for smallholders to have mill share with the terms and conditions that everything runs as long as the smallholders are in partnership,” he said.
This is important to encourage their participation in mill management and ownership and they would directly get the advantages from production process.
He also emphasized that it is important to escalate smallholders’ competency to compete with big scale companies. The smallholders’ plantation productivity is about 10 tons of fresh fruit bunch per hectare per year. “Nowadays partnership, as it is regulated, expands not only in main – plasma only but in other system,” Gamal said. (T2)
