InfoSAWIT, BULUNGAN – Regency of Bulungan would do the best to get low carbon – development by conducting some initiatives that involved agricultural sectors, namely palm oil plantations. One of them was by preparing smallholders to qualify sustainable plantation standards that would be acknowledged in national and international scales.
Assistant II in duty Regency of Bulungan Secretariat, Iwan Sugiyanta said that it would be significant for smallholders to implement sustainable certification standards, such as, Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) and Roundtable Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). "By having the certifications, the smallholders’ production would compete in national and global scale,” he said, as in the official statement to InfoSAWIT, Thursday (29/8/2024).
The training was joined by 60 field counselors for five days. It would end on 30 August 2024. It was the collaboration between Agriculture Agency Regency of Bulungan and Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara (YKAN). The training material covered sustainable certification standards and the latest information about palm oil industries. It is hoped the counselors trained would help the smallholders in the regency to get ISPO and or RSPO certificates.
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).
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. (T2)
