Smallholder farmers' perception on oil palm agroforestry

Abstract

Oil palm has become a prominent agricultural commodity in Indonesia. It is widely adopted mainly as monoculture plantations both by smallholders and large scale companies. Evidence shows that these massive monoculture practices have led to adverse impacts to environmental and social systems as well as unsustainable growth of the producing regions. Particularly, smallholder farmers have encountered difficulties to cope with the fluctuating oil palm price. We argue that adding perennial trees and other agricultural crops or combining with livestock breeding in the form of agroforestry could become an alternative for smallholder farmers to deal with this problem. Oil palm agroforestry (OPAF) has been voluntarily adopted by smallholder farmers at limited scales. This article aims at analysing smallholder farmers' perception on oil palm agroforestry in terms of production and potential contribution to improve environment. Intensive fieldworks were conducted in Jambi and Central Kalimantan to investigate smallholder farmers' perception on oil palm agroforestry. This research reveals that the relatively large proportion of smallholder farmers perceived that (a) oil OPAF produces less of oil palm fresh bunch fruits and demands more complex management compared to those with monoculture system, (b) OPAF helps smallholder farmers to cope with the FFB price fluctuation and improves household food security, and (c) OPAF improves environmental quality in general. From these results, we learned that smallholder farmers have various perceptions on OPAF which are ranged from very positive to very negative. These smallholder farmers' perceptions could become important factors which determine their decisions in adopting or not adopting OPAF. Therefore, more efforts are needed to improve farmers' confidence in adopting oil palm agroforestry. Furthermore, we need more evidence on how oil palm agroforestry system could provide a socially, economically and environmentally feasible alternative to monoculture system.