Indonesian farmers criticize palm oil export ban as prices plummet
Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of palm oil, has struggled with rising prices and low stocks of cooking oil amid a surge in global prices of the raw ingredient.
Citing the need to control the price spikes, which have been exacerbated by the Ukraine war, disappointing harvests and the COVID-19 pandemic, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo announced in April a ban on exports of palm oil and palm oil products. Indonesian farmers however say the ban has caused prices of palm fruit to plummet and thrown their livelihoods into jeopardy.
Mansuetus Darto, head of the Indonesian Oil Palm Farmers’ Union, West Java, said that the effect of the export ban on small scale farmers has been enormous because many of them do not have other sources of income. He said farmers had hoped things were starting to improve after the pandemic, but if there are local or global political problems, it will affect them too.
“As cooking oil prices had been rising for months, Jokowi thought the best thing to do would be to enact the ban. But the export ban isn’t going to act as a permanent solution to stabilize prices, immediately after the ban, issues like illegal exports started because of corruption within the industry.”
Valens Andi, head of the Farmers’ Hope Oil Palm Plantation Cooperative, West Kalimantan said that it’s getting more and more difficult for farmers with all these changes in the prices. “Some feel as if 50 percent of their livelihood has been lost as the prices of the fresh fruit bunches have been slashed and, at the same time, the prices of fertilizer and pesticides have risen by more than 100 percent.”
He said, “We hope that prices of fresh fruit bunches will stabilize and be standardized in line with the minimum wage in each province. We need to make sure that everybody is getting a decent price.”
Vincentius Haryono, farmer of four hectares of oil palm, Jambi said that before the ban, they would sell their palm fruit for 3,600 to 3,800 rupiah ($0.25-$0.26) per kilogram. Now however, the price has gone down to 2,210 rupiah ($0.15) per kilogram.
He said, “I want to talk about the psychological effect of the ban on smallholder farmers. We feel so disappointed and of course, we blame the government for taking this decision and not thinking about us farmers on the ground. Why did the government do this to us? We feel as if we have been the victims of the export ban. An export ban of one week should have been enough for domestic supply to be stabilized again.”
Albertus Wawan, farmer of five hectares of oil palm, West Kalimantan said the government needs to find a solution for smallholder oil palm farmers. “They need to immediately reverse the export ban or, if they’re not going to do that, they need to find another solution. In the beginning, when the ban was first announced, it didn’t include crude palm oil but the factories started to drop their prices anyway.”
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES