PALMOILMAGAZINE, MEDAN – The government encourages smallholders participating in the People’s Palm Oil Replanting (PSR) program to contribute greatly to the biodiesel project which needs an additional supply of up to 6.6 million tons of crude palm oil to increase the mix from B-40 to B-50.
The determination for energy self-sufficiency in the era of President Prabowo’s administration by prioritizing palm vegetable energy sources is an opportunity for oil palm smallholders to increase the economic value of their oil palm plantations.
In this case, the PSR program is the government’s mainstay project in encouraging the improvement of quality as well as the level of production of smallholder palm oil which is still far below the performance of company plantations with production levels still around 40%.
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Director General of Plantations of the Ministry of Agriculture Heru Triwidarto said that the PSR program could help improve the welfare of smallholders through improving the quality of oil palm harvests and increasing the productivity of smallholder oil palm, which accounts for 40% of the total area of oil palm plantations in Indonesia which reaches 15.34 ha.
“The government encourages large companies, state companies and smallholders to jointly increase production to support energy self-sufficiency and food self-sufficiency. There are opportunities for palm oil plantation players. For the energy project to increase to B-50 alone, we need an additional 6.6 million tons of palm oil, if we do extensification, we need 2.3 million hectares of new land for plantations,” Heru said via zoom at the Spotlight of Indonesia Palm Oil Issues (SIOP) 2024 event in Medan, (13/11).
The event was initiated by GAPKI North Sumatra in collaboration with Bisnis Indonesia daily and supported by the Palm Oil Plantation Fund Management Agency (BPDPKS) to encourage the acceleration of the Palm Oil Replanting (PSR) program in Indonesia.
Head of the Corporate Division of the Palm Oil Plantation Fund Management Agency (BPDPKS), Achmad Maulizal said 251,637 ha in 21 provinces with the number of smallholders involved reached 154,936 people in the 2016-2024 period.
“We continue to try to expand this PSR program to boost the welfare of oil palm smallholders. There are 154,936 smallholders who have received this program,” he said.
National oil palm plantation stakeholders are pushing the government to continue the smallholder oil palm replanting (PSR) program with a higher intensity than the current one.
Chairman of the Indonesian Palm Oil Association (Gapki) Eddy Martono said that palm oil companies are committed to helping implement the PSR program to improve the welfare of the people.
According to him, Gapki continues to coordinate with the Director General of Plantations and BPDPKS to encourage the smooth running of the PSR program which still has many obstacles to date.
Some of the problems related to smallholder palm oil, he said, ranged from the unavailability of farmer documents, the long process of uploading documents, the difficult process of making map polygons (high costs and limited resources in the field), many companies were not willing to sign statements of truth and completeness of documents to the reluctance of smallholders to lose income during the period of non-producing plants.
Regarding the funding of the PSR program in partnership with smallholders, he said, his party has its own calculation of program costs, where the value for the minimum per hectare reaches Rp100.54 million and the highest reaches Rp112.42 million per hectare.
“We are happy that the value of PSR assistance has been increased from Rp30 million to Rp60 million per ha. But we have another calculation. Because the value is quite large at Rp112.4 million, we propose the source of funds from BPDPKS and loans,” said Ketum Gapki. (*)
