InfoSAWIT, BOGOR – Until now fats and oils production is dominated by palm oil and soybean. Palm oil production could be about 79,4 million tons in 2022.

“One derivative product of palm oil, such as, biodiesel is really environmental and renewable,” Ery Kurniawan, Editorial in Chief of InfoSAWIT said when being a speaker at one international civil event, Satya Bumi, 25 January 2023 in Bogor.

He also said, palm oil productivity could be up to 5 tons of fresh fruit bunch (FFB)/hectare/year. Soybean only has 4 tons/hectare/year - productivity. It is imaginable, planting palm oil in narrow plantations, palm oil could cover 42% in vegetable oil markets in the globe.

Not only that to make sure that palm oil was processed environmentally, the Government of Indonesia even adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and planned as the target to be realized in 2030.

“The government reinforces palm oil industries through ISPO (Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil) certificates nationally. While SDGs is about to conquer poverty, protect the earth, confirm that everyone live happily, peacefully, and better,” Ery said.

But he also mentioned, palm oil industrial development still faces challenges in national scale, such as, corruption, collusion, and nepotism which many take place in in Indonesia. The other issues are the overlapping policies in national and regional level, no clear and clean regulation to protect the smallholders, corporates, and investors’ business about their own rights and obligations.

In the future, Ery continued, it needs to minimize corporates’ plantation portion by releasing stocks to the markers (civil) by making initial public offering to make the corporates more transparent and accountable.

The government needs to deliver domestic market certainty and clearly by having industrial roadmap and partisanship about environmental and renewable products by using palm oil as the material.

“And escalate domestic absorption on the products that have palm oil as the material,” Ery said. (T2)