Govt takes steps to help smallholders up oil palm yield

May 25, 2010, Tuesday

KOTA KINABALU: The government is placing emphasis on enhancing smallholders’ productivity through the adoption of better planting materials, automation, mechanisation and good agriculture practice.

Tan Sri Bernard Dompok

Smallholders, who account for 40 per cent of the crude palm oil produced in the country, at present, only manage to yield an average of between 2.5 and 3 tons of oil per hectare per year. “The industry average is about four tons and we want the smallholders to catch up to this level. The average can even go up to between six and seven tons in the future.

S“There are 300,000 smallholders in the country and we have to see how they can benefit from the experience of bigger plantation companies,” said Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Tan Sri Bernard Dompok at a press conference after opening the International Palm Oil Sustainability Conference here yesterday.



It is important for smallholders to step up production as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) initiatives, now limited to big plantation companies, would be ultimately extended to smallholders.



RSPO would be introducing a certification scheme for smallholders and is doing whatever possible for the smallholders to be certified. As it is aimed to help the industry, the smallholders standard would not be the same as that for big producers.

On the impact of the lobby mounted against palm oil in Europe, Dompok said it had not affected offtake from Malaysia as crude palm oil stocks now stood at only 1.6 million against a high of two million tons recorded a year ago. “This is a good sign that exports are on the uptake”, he said, adding that Malaysia was still looking at all avenues of hope, including taking up the issue with the World Trade Organisation (WTO).


Meanwhile, the Malaysian Palm Oil Council chief executive officer Tan Sri Dr Yusof Basiron said the industry was supporting the initiatives of the RSPO but other countries were also embarking on their own certification requirements. “Germany wants to have its own and the United States is trying to come up with a certification programme, so where is this going to end?” he asked.

He said Malaysia was still thinking of the best approach to harmonise and unify into some kind of sustainability standards, perhaps, at a national level in order to be able to respond to the regulatory mandatory certification that the European Union and United States were trying to put in place.



Dr Yusof said both countries were trying to put in their own version, bypassing even the RSPO, and this was very troublesome for the producers who have to handle three or four certification schemes. “This is beyond the affordability of smallholders as well,” he added. —