PALMOILMAGAZINE, BULUNGAN – Bulungan Regency is committed to pursuing low-carbon development by implementing various initiatives, particularly in the agricultural sector, including palm oil plantations. One key initiative involves preparing smallholders to meet sustainable plantation standards recognized both nationally and internationally.
Iwan Sugiyanta, Assistant II of the Bulungan Regency Secretariat, emphasized the importance of smallholders adopting sustainable certification standards such as the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). “With these certifications, smallholders’ production can compete on both national and global scales,” he stated in an official release to Palmoilmagazine.com on Thursday (29/8/2024).
The initiative included a five-day training program, which ran until August 30, 2024, involving 60 field counselors. The training was a collaboration between the Bulungan Regency Agriculture Agency and Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara (YKAN). It covered sustainable certification standards and the latest developments in the palm oil industry, aiming to equip counselors with the knowledge needed to assist smallholders in obtaining ISPO and RSPO certifications.
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Regency of Bulungan has 25 private palm oil plantations in nine sub districts. The widest ones are in the Sub district of Sekatak. Data showed that until 2024, about 84% of the plantations are cultivated by the companies and the other 16% are cultivated by the smallholders. In order to realize sustainable goals, the regency officially published Rencana Aksi Daerah Kelapa Sawit Berkelanjutan (RAD KSB) 2023-2024 on 17 November 2023.
Palm Oil Plantation Manager Program, YKAN, Yohanes Ryan said that the training would be about to cover the capacity gaps between the smallholders and big companies. Based on the research, the production gap reached 61% for the smallholders in Bulungan. “The low plantation productivity happened for some factors, such as, agronomy (seed quality and good plantations), and non-agronomy (drought, pest, bad agronomic practices).
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Besides agronomic factors, the smallholders’ plantation productivity had something to do with their cultivation, nursery, harvest, transportation, land ownership, technical competition, capital, and entrepreneurship. “By the training, we do hope that the counselors would help the smallholders to solve every challenge,” Yohanes said.
Besides escalating the technical capability, the training focused to develop the agricultural counselors’ competency and capability. They should understand about the global scale – trade, environment protection, the cultivation in peat and forests.
Gunawan Wibisono, Terrestrial Program Manager, YKAN said that the successful training would help the Regency of Bulungan to realize its vision to be as food sovereignty, go forward, and be welfare. “We do in the next five years, there would be smallholders from the Regency of Bulungan successfully get sustainable certificate,” he said with full of hope. (P2)
