PALMOILMAGAZINE, PARENGGEAN – Twenty smallholders from Koperasi Unit Desa (KUD) Tri Daya in Parenggean Subdistrict, Kotawaringin Timur Regency, participated in a four-month trial of the ITraceability app, developed by PT Surveyor Indonesia (ID Survey).
The app aims to meet the stringent requirements of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which seeks to curb global deforestation, particularly in the palm oil sector in Indonesia.
Rohmat, Certification Manager of KUD Tri Daya, stated that the trial is part of the preparation for EUDR compliance. The smallholders are required to log daily data on production and sales as part of the fresh fruit bunch (FFB) traceability system.
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“The application will be continuously updated and simplified to ensure smallholders can manage it effectively,” Rohmat said, as quoted by Palmoilmagazine.com from Fortasbi on Saturday (31/8/2024).
He added that the training for using the app is now in its second phase. In the first phase, which lasted three months, smallholders were encouraged to regularly input their data while being monitored. In the second phase, they will be monitored for another month after adjustments are made to the app’s features.
“Many questioned in the first phase, but as time went by, the smallholders started to understand that FFB traceability would be very important, namely because KUD Tri Daya got the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certificate,” he said.
He also mentioned that the union should get more members and expand their plantations so when EUDR would really run, the smallholders would get no losses.
“We hope after the smallholders qualify EUDR terms and conditions, there will be incentive to get because they should fulfill the application to confirm that their FFB production would not be mixed with untraceable FFB,” Rohmat said.
He emphasized ID survey had some application simplification from what the smallholders suggested. One of them was the e-mail of the group as the substitution of personal e-mail even though each smallholder got their own account and password.
“The application would be always tested. Each group should get five men that would understand the application to tell the others,” he said. The application would reject unclear data, such as, overload production report.
Prior, the representatives of the European Union visited KUD Tri Daya to directly see the smallholders in the region cultivate their plantations, areas, and environment.
For information, palm oil plantations in Indonesia laid on about 16,38 million hectares, and 41 percent or 6,72 million hectaers were cultivated by the independent smallholders. “KUD Tri Daya got EUDR socialization and we were not surprised,” Rohmat said. (P2)
