MINISTER PUSHING FOR HIGHER PRODUCTIVITY, RETURNS IN PLANTATIONS

By M. Sarawasthi

KUALA LUMPUR, July 30 (Bernama) -- Maximising productivity from Malaysia's
plantation industries -- that is the top priority of the Plantation Industries
and Commodities Ministry in an all-out effort to further strengthen the role of
commodities in building the country's economy.

"We are working with the limitations of Mother Nature. We have only six
million hectares of agriculture land in the country, out of 32 million hectares
in total land size," said Minister Bernard Dompok.

Dompok wants to lift the yields of the main crops like oil palms, rubber
trees and cocoa trees without resorting to expanding their planted area on a
massive scale.

He hopes to be able to do this through better planting materials, good
agricultural practices (GAP) and enhanced research and development (R&D).

Dompok said almost 70 percent of the land available for agriculture in
Malaysia had been planted with oil palms.

"So, when I looked at the situation over the last three months, I think a
very important aspect that we have to look at is to increase productivity, given
the amount of land that we have," he said in an interview with Bernama to mark
his 100 days in office as Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities
after taking over from Peter Chin Fah Kui, who is now the Minister of Energy,
Green Technology and Water.

Increasing productivity will be one of the priority areas of his ministry
in moving the country's plantation industries forward while ensuring that the
management systems of the organisations and agencies under it are operating at
the maximum level.

Taking the country's crude palm oil (CPO) production as an example, Dompok
said the national average was four tonnes per hectare annually although some
leading plantation companies had attained six to seven tones per hectare.

"So, if we can increase the national average from four tonnes per hectare to
five tonnes per hectare per annum, you are talking about an additional 4.5
million tonnes of CPO per annum, which is equivalent of planting extra one
million hectares of oil palms," he said.

Similarly, if the national average could be raised to six tones per hectare,
it would mean having an increase without having to plant on an additional two
million hectare, he added.

In addition, Dompok also wants improvements in the annual yields of fresh
fruit bunches (FBB) at 35 tonnes per hectare from the current 20.18 tonnes and
in the oil extraction rate (OER) to 25 percent from 20 percent currently.

"With R&D, there will be a time when we will have bigger (fresh fruit)
bunches but from shorter trees to render it easier for harvesting," he said.

Dompok is confident of further improvement in yields, especially by
supporting smallholders, whose smallholdings are located near the big
plantations.

Besides inculcating good agricultural practices (GAP) like not cutting back
on fertilisers even though prices of their crops may be low, the other is to get
the big plantations to supply better planting materials to the smallholders as
part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Dompok said the big plantations have every reason to support the
smallholders as the latter would have to send their FFBs to the palm oil mills.

"The big plantations stand to gain from the higher quality of oil produced,"
he said, adding that the large plantations companies that have certification
from the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a group that promotes the
growth and use of sustainable oil palm products through credible global
standards, can also help smallholders attend RSPO in the future.

Dompok also spoke of efforts to form more palm oil production clusters in
Lahad Datu, Sabah.

Such clusters, he said, would make it more attractive for investors to
establish downstream activities, which would add value to the palm oil being
produced and provide more jobs for locals.
Currently, the Plantation Industries and Commodities Ministry plays a major
role in contributing to the country's economy in that commodities accounted for
RM112.43 billion of the country's exports last year, or 17 percent of Malaysia's
total exports.
On rubber production, Dompok also sees greater room for improvement as
annual productivity is at 1.4 tonnes per hectare per annum while neighbouring
Thailand has raised to 1.8 tonnes.

He said the Malaysian rubber industry would have to use the right clones to
maximise greater returns in the future and it should plant more newly-developed
latex-timber clones, which have high latex content as well as rubber wood.

Dompok explained that such clones yielded greater amounts of latex while the
trees could be felled after 15 years for timber, which would mean providing a
sustainable avenue for the country's timber industry to get its wood supplies.

"Our furniture industry is thriving and 80 percent of the country's
furniture industry depends on rubber wood and because rubberwood is sustainably
produced, demand is good from countries in Europe and the United States," he
said.

As for cocoa, Dompok said production had dropped over the years when
smallholders switched to oil palms.

"Malaysia has a grinding capacity of 340,000 tonnes but last year we only
produced 28,000 tonnes of cocoa beans, which is less than 10 percent (of the
capacity), mainly because the land planted with cocoa had been taken over by oil
palms.

"Therefore, we are encouraging (oil palm) smallholders to undertake
inter-cropping of other cash crops like cocoa and even rearing animals," he
said.

On tobacco, Dompok said Malaysian tobacco farmers cannot compete with lower
cost producers in other Asean countries as a result of the Asean Free Trade
Agreement (AFTA) and the government had taken various initiatives to introduce
other crops like kenaf and jatropha.

But he said a lot of R&D would have to be done before local farmers were
encouraged to go full steam into kenaf and jatropha.

Kenaf is cultivated for its fibre while the seeds of the jatropha can be
crushed for oil which can be used for bio-diesel.
-- BERNAMA