“DIRTY” palm oil, which is tied to deforestation, the killing of endangered wildlife and modern-day slavery, is being rejected by more and more countries beyond Europe.

To combat this, Pakatan Harapan is pushing hard for the whole industry – from smallholders to millers and plantation companies – to obtain the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) certification.

MSPO is supposed to ensure that oil palm is grown and its fruits processed under environmentally and socially responsible conditions.

In theory, MSPO-certified palm oil will be able to access markets where consumers are demanding responsibly produced food items.

But apathy, red tape and steep costs are among the reasons a majority of independent smallholders have refused to join the MSPO process, despite the generous subsidies offered.

The government has earmarked RM100 million to help these planters, who grow 40% of the crop in Malaysia, meet the necessary conditions to get certified.

For smallholders, who are classified as those owning no more than 12ha of trees, Putrajaya will bear the full cost of the certification process.

Primary Industries Minister Teresa Kok said only 11% of the country’s 650,000 smallholders have obtained the certification since a campaign encouraging them to do so started in late 2018.

“The government has done a lot to promote the subsidies, and yet, we’re still discovering that a lot of smallholders don’t know about it,” said Lehan Sayahan of the National Smallholders’ Association.

“We are always encouraging our members to get certified because the government is fully subsidising the costs,” the Selangor chapter chief told The Malaysian Insight, adding that the certification process comes to about RM40,000.

“But there are also quite a number who do not want to know.”

Conditions and hurdles

Many smallholders find it hard to meet the MSPO conditions because of the dynamics in the supply chain, said Rahman Sarip, an independent grower based in Ijok, a plantation town outside the Klang Valley.

For instance, owners of oil palm estates leave it to people like Rahman to manage their trees, and harvest and sell the oil palm fruits because the work is physically demanding.

The 70-year-old, who retired as a teacher, manages his own 12ha plot, and a total of 24ha collectively owned by several people.

“To certify all these estates under MSPO, the real landowners have to do it themselves. But these owners now live in the cities and are hard to trace.”

Another independent grower, Sahman Duriat, complained that the certification process is tedious.

“First, you have to ensure that the land title you hold states that it’s agricultural land used to grow oil palm. But many growers have titles that state they are growing rubber or coconut,” said the 52-year-old.

“To get the status of the titles changed, you have to visit the land office, and that takes time and money. So, people just give up when their certification applications get rejected due to the titles.”

A palm oil industry source said another huge hurdle for smallholders is the cost of employing responsible growing and harvesting methods.

Under MSPO, growers must use adequate safety gear and government-approved herbicides, and not plant on peat soil.

They must also ensure their workers are paid at least the minimum wage, and that foreign workers have the necessary documents.

“Using undocumented foreign workers is a wide-scale problem in the industry because there is a lack of legal foreign migrants who want to do such work,” said the industry player, who requested anonymity.

“So, people cut corners and hire illegal Indonesians because they can’t find legal ones. You won’t be able to get the MSPO certification if you use illegals, but what choice do smallholders have?”

Bakhtiar Talhah, a top official in the sustainable palm oil industry, admits that certification can be difficult to obtain for smallholders because of the high costs involved.

“And yet, at the end of the day, these standards are also for us,” said the CEO of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, a global certification system that is more stringent than MSPO.

“Why should only the Europeans have the choice of consuming responsibly produced palm oil? Don’t Malaysians also deserve the same, to know that they are using palm oil that was produced responsibly by their own people?

“Should not the makcik and pakcik smallholders also deserve to use the same safety procedures as best practices like the big planters?” – February 7, 2020.