JAKARTA  - The problems in palm oil plantations seem everlasting, starting from the environment, employee, fuel, until the slow finding of sophisticated technology. As the result, the victim is the decreasing national competitiveness.

Since 2000s, national palm oil plantations keep developing. In the end, Indonesia surpassed Malaysia as the main crude palm oil (CPO) producer in the world since 2006.

Unfortunately, the achievment got does not make all problems in palm oil plantations decrease. In the contrary, they keep happening and get bigger – from the environmental issues vocalized by the environmental campaigners, the labors salary, until the increasing agrochemical cost, fuel and others.

This conditions negatively effect to the national palm oil plantation competitiveness. In addition, CPO price is still decreasing for the implication of the decreasing price of crude oil. This presses more the national palm oil plantation competitiveness.

The increasing cost production also reduce the competitivenss. It gets worse for the slow finding of deriving technology in palm oil plantation.

Furthermore, palm oil plantation  being one of labor intencive industrial category needs alternative technology to be efficient for the increasing investment. It can be seen from the increasing productional cost, especially from the fertilizer and the salary of the employees, such as, the harvester, nursing, and others.

The big gap between the production results and the the ungot theory becomes the same work. Director PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology (SMART) Tbk., Daud Dharsono said, it needs to support the research to find the material of the plants which could highly produces. In addition according to Corley research could produce 18 tons of CPO/hectare/year but the fact shows, it produces only 4 tons of CPO/hectare/year.

Fo more detail, it can be read in InfoSAWIT Magazine, February 2015. http://www.store.infosawit.com/