KUCHING: The Sarawak Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Authority (SALCRA) remains a crucial avenue for locals via its schemes whereby smallholders have made use of their Native Customary Rights (NCR) lands for growing oil palm.
Take, for example Latifah Rasat, a divorced mother with three young children, no skills and providing for them through making salted fish for sale in villages around Kampong Hilir Laut in Kabong, Sarawak.
For her and her family, their inheritance of land totalling more than 15 acres was developed by SALCRA under oil palm in 1992, which eventually earned steady incomes for the family which lead to the setting up of a sundry shop by Latifah in 1998.
This is among many inspiring stories of rural communities turning for the better through planting oil as smallholders under the SALCRA.
“Based on statistics from Ministry of Land Development Sarawak, as at December 2013, more than 44,598 landowners have participated in oil palm cultivation on an organized basis with another 17,578 smallholders actively involved in the palm oil industry in Sarawak,” said a spokesperson from Sarawak oil Palm Plantation Owners Association (Soppoa).
“What these mean is that idle lands are being utilised for commercial agriculture, earning incomes for land owners everywhere, raising employment and standard of living for numerous rural communities and providing opportunities for their children to education, health benefits and bright futures.”
Soppoa affirms that the industry provides steady incomes to land owners and smallholders while providing job opportunities for countless others in support services relating to the industry such as transportation, drivers, contractors and suppliers of goods and services.
In fact, the palm oil industry in Sarawak is responsible for more than 30 per cent of the total workforce in the state with the inclusion of foreign workers brought in to supplement the demand of labor here.
Oil palm cultivation only started in Sarawak in the late 60s with large scale planting in the 1990s. Currently, more than 1.2 million hectares are planted under oil palm in Sarawak, spreading from Tanjong Datu to Limbang.
In terms of contributions, the industry has generated over RM2.2 billion in revenue for the state (2002 – 2013) while investments of plantations and estates, mills and other related activities is well over RM21.92 billion.
It is certainly becoming a major contributor for the state’s revenue after oil and gas industry, timber industry but is poised for further growth due to the sustainable and renewable nature of being a crop that only needs replanting after approximately 25 productive years.
Currently, palm oil produced in Sarawak is traceable from the mills down to the fresh fruit suppliers as majority of these are from estates of the mills’ companies which adopt Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) in their operations.
For smallholders who also sent fresh fruits bunches to the mills, they also need to adopt GAP as part of their responsibilities to ensure that the entire supply chain is traceable.
As such, programs to inform and educate smallholders on GAP and MSPO (Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil) practices are being undertaken by respective agencies like the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) and Soppoa.
The palm oil industry is one of the most stringently governed industries in comparison to others in Malaysia.
It comes under the purview of the MPOB in all matters relating to the planting, harvesting and export of palm oil while in Sarawak it is further subjected to land codes and laws in the state as well as under the purview of the Ministry of Land Development Sarawak.
“What all these mean is that the industry is well regulated and subjected to the nation’s and state’s laws in all aspects of the operations which are geared towards sustainability and adoption of Good Agricultural Practices,” Soppoa concluded.
Taken from The Borneo Post
