Palm oil plantation and cultivation: Prosperity and productivity of smallholders

Abstract

Indonesia developed the Smallholder Plantation Scheme (PIR) in the early 1980s, making smallholders an important part of the national scale. Increasing smallholder yields is an important instrument for increasing local income and livelihoods. However, small-scale oil palm expansion has problems with low productivity and quality of production. Therefore, to increase their productivity and improve their cultivation, this study measures the importance of planting behavior and specific treatment of farmers’ prosperity and productivity. To measure the possible significant differences between and within groups, a statistical approach, ANOVA, has been used while Spearman’s correlation matrix also has been used to measure the correlation between variables. This study finds that good seed treatment and adequate doses of fertilizer are important for farmers’ prosperity and productivity. Smallholder farmers have the least expenditure but the highest average production and income with the most extended growing age when compared with the other two groups of smallholder farmers. Even though the number of seeds used was the smallest, the success rate of smallholder planting was the highest. The optimal use of fertilizer and seed care alone is not significant enough to increase yields. It is a combination of other factors such as planting management practices, drainage capacity and soil substrate properties, climate characteristics, rainfall distribution, nutrient supply, and prevention of plant diseases and also determining maximum yield.

Keywords

• palm oil
• smallholder plantation scheme
• fertilizer
• smallholder farmer