InfoSAWIT, JAKARTA –In the late days, the independent smallholders’ fresh fruit bunch (FFB) gets cheaper. According to what InfoSAWIT, got, in average, it is about Rp 500-600/Kg.

If it is so, one thing for sure, what happened in the end of 2008 would happen again. Many smallholders would lose their plantation for they could not cultivate it because of the unbalance production cost.

When the smallholders’ FFB is cheap, the negative campaign from one international non-government organization, Greenpeace assumed one big palm oil plantation and trader company, Wilmar Internasional.

For some sides, what Greenpeace did has made everything worse to the FFB. Is it true?

Soaduon Edo Sitorus, a campaigner for the independent smallholders said, if the smallholders notice to nowadays condition, they should tell it to the regional and central government.

He thought that the politic of power is to get after the power, but the people’s voice is the politic of struggle to have partisanship and protection from the rulers. The people may be thought as the weakest parts and the government should protect them so that they would not be pressed by markets, capitalists, or who pressed them.

“We need the real protection, but not search those to be blamed,” he noted.

He also mentioned that what Greenpeace campaigned about dirty palm oil has run for years. The government has been for years in improving its governance, such as, by making palm oil moratorium. This is the proof that palm oil has issues.

Corruption Eradication Commission has warned the government to improve the complex issues in palm oil because they are parts of agrarian reform to have solution. “There are many fundamental issues there,” he said.

The government needs to think of how to save and protect the smallholders because the government is the ruler, consists of the authorities, and execute what the people’s hope. (T2)