Laurène Feintrenie

The livelihood impacts of oil palm: smallholders in Indonesia

The biodiversity and climate consequences of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) expansion across South East Asia have received considerable attention. The human side of the issue, highlighted with reports of negative livelihood outcomes and rights abuses by oil palm companies, has also led to controversy. Oil palm related conflicts have been widely documented in Indonesia yet uptake by farmers has also been extensive. An assessment of the livelihood impacts of oil palm development, including sources of conflict, is needed to shed light on the apparent contradiction between these reports and the evident enthusiasm of farmers to join the oil palm craze thereby informing future expansion. We assessed the impact of oil palm development on the economic wellbeing of rural farmers in Indonesia. We found that many smallholders have benefited substantially from the higher returns to land and labour afforded by oil palm but district authorities and smallholder cooperatives play key roles in the realisation of benefits. Conflicts between communities and companies have resulted almost entirely from lack of transparency, the absence of free, prior, and informed consent and unequal benefit sharing, and have been exacerbated by the absence of clear land rights. We make specific recommendations to improve the present situation and foster the establishment of smallholder friendly production regimes. Oil palm expansion in Indonesia is set to continue. If environmental standards can be raised and policy interventions targeted at the broader social impacts of land development this expansion may be achieved to the significant benefit of large numbers of rural smallholders.

Why do farmers prefer oil palm? Lessons learnt from Bungo district, Indonesia

Indonesia has been the world’s largest producer and exporter of palm oil since 2008. This paper discussed the livelihood impacts of oil palm development in Indonesia, based on lessons learnt from Bungo district, in the province of Jambi. The various community-company partnerships that structure the sector are reviewed and the difficulties raised by the joint ventures schemes are discussed. The merits and drawbacks of oil palm as a smallholder crop are then analysed, based on household socio-economic surveys conducted in 2007–2010. The main causes of conflicts between oil palm companies and communities are unclear land tenure, and a recurrent lack of leadership in smallholders’ cooperatives. Under fair partnerships between smallholders and companies, oil palm could become a smallholder friendly crop. The land-use profitability analysis demonstrates the high returns that can be generated by oil palm independent smallholdings, making it highly competitive with rubber, and much more profitable than rice production.

Understanding and Integrating Local Perceptions of Trees and Forests into Incentives for Sustainable Landscape Management

We examine five forested landscapes in Africa (Cameroon, Madagascar, and Tanzania) and Asia (Indonesia and Laos) at different stages of landscape change. In all five areas, forest cover (outside of protected areas) continues to decrease despite local people’s recognition of the importance of forest products and services. After forest conversion, agroforestry systems and fallows provide multiple functions and valued products, and retain significant biodiversity. But there are indications that such land use is transitory, with gradual simplification and loss of complex agroforests and fallows as land use becomes increasingly individualistic and profit driven. In Indonesia and Tanzania, farmers favor monocultures (rubber and oil palm, and sugarcane, respectively) for their high financial returns, with these systems replacing existing complex agroforests. In the study sites in Madagascar and Laos, investments in agroforests and new crops remain rare, despite government attempts to eradicate swidden systems and their multifunctional fallows. We discuss approaches to assessing local values related to landscape cover and associated goods and services. We highlight discrepancies between individual and collective responses in characterizing land use tendencies, and discuss the effects of accessibility on land management. We conclude that a combination of social, economic, and spatially explicit assessment methods is necessary to inform land use planning. Furthermore, any efforts to modify current trends will require clear incentives, such as through carbon finance. We speculate on the nature of such incentive schemes and the possibility of rewarding the provision of ecosystem services at a landscape scale and in a socially equitable manner.

Agro-industrial plantations in Central Africa, risks and opportunities

Large-scale land-based investments in Central Africa are not new, and the first decade of the twenty-first century saw renewed interest in agriculture by foreign investors. The new rush for farm land has involved new multi-national holdings in the region and sometimes in the sector. This paper analyses the recent wave of investments in farm land, and discusses their specificity, the ways the host countries deal with investors, and the impacts of these large-scale projects on livelihoods and on forest cover. It focuses on the four countries that host most of the natural forests in the Congo Basin: Cameroon, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Republic of Congo. The analysis was based on a historical review of the scientific literature and of media reports. Results are based on the assessment of large-scale land acquisitions for agricultural expansion and on field surveys conducted in 2012 and 2013, during which key stakeholders were interviewed in the four countries.

Reframing Community Forestry to Manage the Forest–Farm Interface

At the 2010 Montpellier conference on ‘Taking Stock of Smallholder and Community Forestry: Where do we go from here?’, researchers, policy-makers and practitioners came together to discuss historical trends and future directions for understanding and supporting forest sustainability and local livelihoods in forest-based communities. A consensus arising from these discussions was that there is a need to reframe and broaden approaches to understand forestry practised by smallholders and communities. The paper highlights three key topics from that discussion: (1) the need to reconsider definitions of community forestry, (2) the need to broaden understanding of rights surrounding forest resources and (3) the need to reframe research to focus on management of the forest–farm interface.

FARmeRS' peRSpeCTIveS ABOUT AgROFOReSTS CONveRSION TO plANTATIONS IN SUmATRA. leSSONS leARNT FROm BUNgO DISTRICT (JAmBI, INDONeSIA)

ABSTRACT Located on the fringe of the last tropical rainforests of Sumatra, rubber agroforests are known to conserve the main ecological functions of the primary forest, including a large part of its biodiversity. Nowadays these smallholder plantations are under threat. The regular rise of natural rubber and crude palm oil prices has been a major incentive for farmers to convert their agroforests into clonal rubber and oil-palm plantations. However, some areas seem to resist conversion. A multidisciplinary approach combining perception surveys and satellite-image analysis was designed to find out the reasons for these differences. In 12 villages grouped in 3 categories according to their agroforest conversion rate between 1993 and 2005, farmers were queried about the pros and the cons of the major cropping systems, their attitude towards conservation, and how they envisaged the future of their landscape. This method enabled us to elaborate the most likely scenarios of landscape evolution for the coming years.

How to take advantage of a new crop? The experience of Melanesian smallholders

Coconut-based agroforestry systems have a central role in livelihoods on Malo Island in the South Pacific. These mixed plantations provide households with both food and a cash income, thanks to the association in space and time of root crops, vegetables, and cash crops (coconut, cocoa and vanilla). Vanilla has been developed on the island since the year 2000. Farmers have tried to adapt their production systems to include it, with some choosing to do so by associating vanilla with their main cash crop, coconut. A survey of these innovative practices and their economic results conducted in 2005 resulted in an economic modelling of this new agroforestry system with the software Olympe. This study illustrates the use of economic modelling with Olympe to simulate and test new agricultural practices in complex agroforestry systems. The software proved to suit agroforestry systems very well and provided useful information, particularly on economic aspects.

Coconut- and Cocoa-Based Agroforestry Systems in Vanuatu: A Diversification Strategy in Tune with the Farmers’ Life Cycle

Do coconut- and cocoa-based agroforestry systems meet the needs of families on Malo (Vanuatu)? A socio-economic study conducted in three of the island’s villages offers answers to this question based on the analysis of the economic performances of these systems and their integration into the family life cycle. Modelling demonstrates the economic potential of agroforestry systems and assesses the contribution of various components to the overall production. The harmony between the production cycles of a coconut agroforestry system and those of the farmer’s household has also to be stressed. Uncontrolled intensification would generate several social and environmental risks.