Indonesia to boost oil palm replanting efforts, says senior official

INDONESIA will boost efforts to ensure that an oil palm replanting scheme meets a target of 180,000 ha this year, a senior official said on Monday (Feb 27).

Five years ago, the world’s biggest palm oil producer launched a subsidised replanting programme for smallholders. This was aimed at boosting output without clearing more forested land, and at fending off attacks about the crop’s sustainability.

Smallholders account for around 40 per cent of Indonesia’s 16 million hectares of oil palm plantations. Some palms in smallholder farms have not been replanted in more than 25 years.

At the scheme’s launch in late 2017, the authorities set an initial target of replanting 2.4 million ha by 2025. Sluggish implementation forced them in 2019 to adjust the target downwards, to 180,000 ha per year, but even this reduced target has not been met.

Musdhalifah Machmud, a senior official at the Coordinating Ministry of Economic Affairs, said that only around 278,000 ha of the crop had been replanted since 2017.

“The 180,000 ha target must really be reached,” she said, adding that the authorities had simplified requirements for the scheme. She also called for improvements in coordination, as well as the boosting of private sector involvement.

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“The average yield of 2.5 tonnes per ha must be increased, to six tonnes to eight tonnes per ha,” Musdhalifah said at a meeting with government officials and oil palm planters.

The latest plan comes two months after the European Union agreed on a new deforestation law. The law will require companies to produce due-diligence statements showing when and where commodities were produced. Companies will also need to provide “verifiable” information proving that such commodities were not grown on land deforested after 2020.

Farmers have faced difficulties in proving that their farms are not in a forested area and do not overlap with other concessions. At times of high palm oil prices, farmers have also been reluctant to join the replanting scheme, worried about missing out on profit. REUTERS