The potential that Indonesia palm oil has turns out to be a threat for vegetable plantation in Europe and USA. Thereby, numerous attempts have been done so far to prevent palm oil produced in Indonesia to enter into the market.
Head of Indonesia Palm Oil Farmers Association, Gus DalhariHarahap, said that European countries and USA have tried to stop our palm oil productions from getting into a prospective market and one of the steps they have taken is by interfering the rules setting in the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and High Conservation Value (HCV).
Whereas he said, Indonesia has enacted the set of rules in the Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) and applied it into all our national palm oil companies. “Palm oil in Indonesia are mostly planted on small-size fields but reach high-level of productivity, unlike in Europe or in the USA which is the opposite”, said Gus to Merdeka, yesterday.
European countries and the USA expect to keep the cost of soybean oil and sunflower production remain high in the global trade level, or at least there would be a balance between the price of palm oil with soybean and with sunflower.
“By making the cost production high and a balance between prices, they would expect that their cost of plantation production will not plunge down. Especially nowadays palm oil products are highly attractive in the global trade”, said Gus again. Therefore, black-campaigning has been going on and addressed to palm oil productions, from Indonesia in particular. Issues concerning environment, forest fire, green-house effect, and unsustainability are spread out. “And yet I believe that Indonesia palm oil growers have never spoiled the surrounding environment”, said Gus.
General Head of Indonesia Palm oil Assembly, DeromBangunsuggested that the foreign countries intention cannot simply be ignored. He hopes that a regulation will be soon be drafted and approved for the sake of the national interest, so that all will receive the same legal security which is entitled for both big-scale business players and farmers who for all these time have been criminalized by Civil Society Organization (CSO) activities who always discredit palm oil as an environmental destroyer.
He also said that now foreigners have added the complexity of this issue of palm oil industry, not to mention the issue of crude palm oil / CPO national production which reached 30 million tons last year. “This industry also involves many farmers and entrepreneurs, and it brings a huge foreign exchange for our country,” said him.
He believes that the existence of the Regulation on Palm Oil could cover all interests. “Not only covering businessmen and farmers interests, but also downstream industry, marketing, financing, and management of plantations,” said Derom.
Source: Rakyat Merdeka (Monday, November 21, 2016, Page 14)