PALMOILMAGAZINE, LABUHANBATU – Labuhanbatu Utara Regency, in collaboration with the World Agroforestry (ICRAF) and the Indonesian Agroforestry Society (Masyarakat Agroforestri Indonesia/MAFI), has initiated a partnership to advance sustainable palm oil development in the region through the Sustainable Farming in Tropical Asian Landscapes (SFITAL) program.
A primary objective of the program is to enhance the capacity and capabilities of palm oil farmers. This entails augmenting their knowledge and skills, ensuring that they are equipped to adhere to cultivation standards such as the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) certification, which promotes good agricultural practices at the national level.
The concrete thing to support the program is regulated by the Decision of Labuhanbatu Utara Regent Number: 500.8/617/DIPERTA/RAD-KSB/IX/2023, that decided 7 project villages. The decision was supported by the Decision of Head of Agriculture Agency Regency of Labuhanbatu Utara Number: 500.8/1618/DIPERTA/2023, which decided teams to develop 7 project villages.
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As Palmoilmagazine.com quoted from the official page of Regency of Labuhanbatu Utara, , to follow up training of trainers (ToT) in the second phase, there were trainings for 7 agricultural counselors in the regency on 29-31 January 2024. It was followed up by the visit on 5 February 2024 to PT ASD Bakri, Regency of Asahan. The theme of the learning visit was “Bahan Tanam Kelapa Sawit Unggul Bersertifikat.”
The learning visit was about that the trained counselors would deliver understanding for smallholders about selecting palm oil seed materials which are certified and understand how to select mother trees, pollination process to get certified sprouts and have permits to be sold.
These should be their materials to make business opportunity for planters’ organizations in the regency. These concrete things that the regency did in cooperation with its partners both locally and internationally should positively deliver impacts to encourage sustainable palm oil practices based on the standards in national scale. Everything is about to create environmental and high competitive palm oil industries in the regency. (T2)
