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Sumatra community faces up to ‘plasma’ disappointment after palm oil policy shift

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PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Almost two years after a joint Mongabay investigation revealed systemic failure by Indonesia’s plantation industry to share gains with community farmers, countless small farmers have yet to benefit from the profit-sharing scheme established almost two decades ago. “We’re looking for the best solution for the community,” said Jonhor Amin, a neighborhood leader in Tebing Tinggi Okura village on the outskirts of Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau province on the island of Sumatra.  Like thousands of communities living alongside land zoned for oil palm concessions, people in Tebing Tinggi Okura say they haven’t received what was promised when Indonesia made its “plasma” scheme a legal requirement in 2007. The issue has continued to foster bad faith in the Sumatran village. Smallholdings have formed an integral part of Indonesia’s palm oil sector for decades. Several million individual farmers today account for around 40% of output in the world’s largest producer of palm oil, which is used in everything from consumer goods to fuels.  Beginning around the 1980s, Indonesia’s government accelerated issuance of permits for companies to convert vast tracts of old-growth rainforest for oil palm cultivation at scale. Corporate growers often promised to share proceeds with the communities whose land was zoned for production in order to soothe community relations. In 2007, the scheme known as plasma became legally mandatory, in which companies were required to allocate 20% of any new plantation to local communities. However, a 2022 investigation by Mongabay, in partnership with the BBC and The Gecko Project, a…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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