Photo by : Caca Asep S / Sawitfest 2021
Palmoilmagazine, JAKARTA – The smallholders joining in Serikat Petani Indonesia (SPI) and Serikat Petani Kelapa Sawit (SPKS) on Thursday (12/5/2022) did discussion about palm oil issues in smallholders level in palm oil centers in Indonesia after the Regulation of Minister of Trade Number 22 / 2022 about Temporary Export Ban on Crude Palm Oil (CPO), Refined, Bleached and Deodorized Palm Oil, Refined, Bleached and Deodorized Palm Olein, and Used Cooking Oil, ran.
The smallholders thought, CPO and its derivative product export ban should be the moment for the government to improve palm oil plantation system and governance.
At least, there are three aspects that palm oil plantations faced nationally, they are, the first, agrarian reform which never runs. This made palm oil plantations as the sources of agrarian conflicts, land ownership, and mastery gap.
The second, palm oil plantations which implement monoculture agricultural system is taken to make impacts for the environment. The third, the smallholders that depend on the corporates and they do not have mills to process fresh fruit bunch (FFB) to be crude palm oil or palm cooking oil. The upstream and downstream sectors are still mastered by few rich people.
That is why the smallholders hoped, the government should immediately evaluate and take legal firm action to the mills/companies from trader, grower, to the producers if they took part in deciding FFB price produced by the smallholders in one side with no consideration on what the government decided, and other mis-practices that delivered the loss for the smallholders.
“We suspected, FFB price decision does not refer to the price international as it was. What is going on is that based on the price nationally. The suspect has something to do with the previous facts that many mills do not obey and run what the government decided. We claim that the country shall not fail. We fully support that the government should not let FFB price decision to the stakeholders,” the smallholders told, as in the official statement to Palmoilmagazine, Friday (13/5/2022).
In addition, many smallholders in palm oil centers in Indonesia get cheaper FFB than what the government decided after the Regulation of Minister of Trade Number 22 / 2022 runs.
Not only that, the smallholders urged the government to evaluate and published the fair policy to protect them from the expensive input production, such as, the fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, which keep drastically increasing.
CPO and its derivative export ban should be the moment for the government to improve oligopoly market structure in upstream industries and monopoly market structure in downstream sector which put the smallholders aside as the actors in palm oil supply chain, and also get rid of them as the land owners because of the lame land mastery as the impact of excessive extensification from the available regulations,” the smallholders insisted. (T2)
