InfoSAWIT, JAKARTA - Someone’s regular life story is always not interesting to tell even write. This might happen that the success of regular man could have been got and enjoyed by himself. But the successful story of a smallholder seems has no end to tell.
What is interesting is that the life of a smallholder who still struggles for his life in East Kalimantan. He does anything to enlarge his palm oil areas, cultivates the areas, seeks the superior seeds and plants them.
The unique is that his ability derives from the experiences and the stories he heard. When he knows palm oil plantation, Kapang, the fifty year old man starts to understand, how to do palm oil cultivation well.
“Actually, I never dreamed to have palm oil plantation,” he said while telling his story.
His interest in planting palm oil started when he worked in a palm oil company, PTPN 6. He went out of South Sulawesi, where he was born and struggled for life to be the worker in a palm oil plantation company.
Working as well as he could as the employee makes him know palm oil world, starting from the planting to the nursery. “At the time, in 1990, I went to Kalimantan and worked in PTPN 6,” he explained.
To Survive, He Would Do Anything
Kapang, who struggled for life as the worker in PTPN 6 could work in the palm oil plantation for one decade only. He decided to get another jobs in 2000. He decided it for his monthly salary was lack of fulfilling the daily need in his family.
Kapang was forced to do anything. It was part of his life to survive. Though everything was difficult, he kept strungling for every single day to get income. While putting aside his income to save, Kapang always seeks the other chances to be better.
In 2010, when a company offered a program to people to be plasma smallholders of palm oil plantation, he and his friends listed their names to participate. What he did comes to a good result.
“The chance to be plasma smallholders makes my life better slowly but sure,” he said. As the beginner, but having many experiences, such as, working in a palm oil plantation, makes him quickly adopt and succeed to enlarge the areas in the cooperation with the company.
In the same time, having safe when he worked, he and his other friends also cultivate palm oil independently. But they faced many problems for there were many fake seeds in the society. “It is hard to develop palm oil areas independently for the seeds and the fertilizers are fake,” he mentioned. (T1)
