Small farmers not ready as Indonesia looks to impose its palm oil sustainability standard on all

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government aims to impose its homegrown sustainability standard for palm oil on all operators, but concerns persist over the readiness of the previously exempt small-scale farmers who manage two-fifths of total plantation area nationwide. Mandatory participation in the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil scheme, or ISPO, was initially aimed at farmers and companies managing plantations of more than 25 hectares (62 acres) in size. This, however, exempts from certification the vast number of smaller plantations that, combined, account for 40 percent of oil palm plantations in the country. To date, less than 1 percent of independent smallholder farms are certified as sustainable under the ISPO and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the world’s largest association for ethical production of palm oil. The industry has long been associated with social and environmental problems such as forced labor and massive deforestation. The government, aware that any meaningful reform of the industry would have to include small-scale farmers, plans to make ISPO certification mandatory for these smallholders by 2020. The need to do so will only grow more urgent as the number of such operators continues to increase, expanding their share of Indonesia’s oil palm plantation area to 60 percent by 2030. “Independent smallholders are thus critical players for bringing sustainable, conflict-free palm oil into reality,” the World Resources Institute (WRI) said in a recent blog post. However, there are concerns that smallholders, long overlooked by both industry and government for assistance in adopting agricultural best practices, are not…

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