19 October 2010
The Star today carried a news column on oil palm replanting, highlighting the role of the Malaysian Palm Oil Board(MPOB) on this issue. This semi-government agency under the Ministry of Plantation Management and Commodities is entrusted with the job of encouraging oil palm smallholders to replant their trees with higher-yielding clones once the palms passed thier economic life of 25 years. The smallholders will be given cash of RM1000 per acre if they undertook this replanting scheme with MPOB. However, response from the scheme has been lukewarm. The big players in the palm oil industry too are delaying to replant oil palm because of the relatively high prices that the commodity is fetching in the market place. If both the smallholders and their big brothers are unwilling to replant for reasons of their own, our country is going to be affected in terms of national oil palm productivity. We may no longer be the No 1 Palm Oil producer because our neighbour Indonesia is slowly overtaking us sooner than later!
Psss.....Do the smallholders need a much bigger incentive to replant oil palm????
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