PALMOILMAGAZINE, BANDA ACEH – The Agriculture and Plantation Agency of Aceh Province has set the fresh fruit bunch (FFB) prices for the period from July 25 to August 15, 2024.
For FFB aged 10-20 years, the price is Rp 2,749 per kilogram in eastern Aceh and Rp 2,712 per kilogram in western Aceh.
For 3-year-old FFB, the price is Rp 1,997 per kilogram in eastern Aceh and Rp 1,971 per kilogram in western Aceh. For 25-year-old FFB, the price is Rp 2,514 per kilogram in eastern Aceh and Rp 2,481 per kilogram in western Aceh. The price of crude palm oil (CPO) is Rp 12,691.37 per kilogram.
The Aceh Provincial Government, through the Agriculture and Plantation Agency, encourages smallholders to form partnerships with CPO mills to ensure they receive fair FFB prices.
Cut Huzaimah, the Head of the Agriculture and Plantation Agency, stated that the government sets FFB prices in phases. Smallholders should receive the government-decided FFB selling prices, which can be achieved through partnerships with the mills.
“If they are in partnership, the company should purchase FFB as same as the price that the government decided,” Cut Huzaimah said in Banda Aceh, as Palmoilmagazine.com quoted from Antara, Tuesday (30/7/2024).
The FFB price was referred to the Regulation of Minister of Agriculture Number 1 / 2018 about Fresh Fruit Bunch Purchasing Price Guidelines that Smallholders Produced. The mills that did not obey the regulation would get sanction, starting from the administration until the business permit revocation. “But if the smallholders are not in partnership, it would be difficult for us to deliver the sanction for the mills,” she said.
She continued, the smallholders in Aceh were small in numbers that got partnership with the mills and this made FFB price cheaper than it that the government decided. “For all these years, the smallholders sold their production to the middlemen and then the middlemen sold it to the mill. The middlemen got better selling price,” she said.
By having partnership, the smallholders would directly sell to the mills and the mills would develop the smallholders to produce FFB well, including to get enough yield. “There should be no reason to say that the yield would not be good if the smallholders were in partnership. But if they are not, the company would say so. This made FFB cheaper. That is why we encouraged the smallholders to get partnership with the companies,” Cut Huzaimah said. (P2)
