What Should a Peasant Do With Their Palm Fruit? A Moral Economy of Peasant Oil Palm Contract Farming in Colombia

Rising demand for products derived from oil palm has resulted in accelerated expansion of its global cropping area. In Southeast Asia, where most of world's oil palm is produced, forest loss due to oil palm cultivation has become one of the major threats to biodiversity. As reviewed in Chapter 1, oil palm is now rapidly expanding in Latin America, where Colombia is the largest oil palm producer with nearly 500,000 ha currently under cultivation. Although most oil palm expansion in Colombia has taken place on partially degraded lands or in areas previously used for crops or livestock, little is known about the biodiversity that currently exists in these landscapes and the effect that expanded oil palm agriculture will have. Because Colombia is one of the world's most biodiverse countries, understanding how oil palm production affects wildlife communities is vital to inform conservation planning and improve land-management practices. In this thesis, I used mammal species as a focal group to evaluate how fauna have responded to expanding oil palm production in Colombia. Mammals are a diverse group and, as such, are good indicators of ecosystem degradation. This is because mammals occupy a wide range of ecological niches, have important and varied roles at a range of different trophic levels, and are often vulnerable to habitat fragmentation. I conducted this study in the rural areas surrounding the towns of Restrepo, Cumaral, Cabuyaro, Acacias, Castilla la Nueva, and San Carlos de Guaroa, in the Department of Meta, in the eastern plains or Llanos Orientales region of Colombia. This region, which has become the largest oil palm-production zone in the country, is a seminatural savanna ecosystem interspersed by riparian forests of differing sizes and ages along rivers and streams and human land uses such as grazing and agriculture. Within this study area, I used unbaited, automatic camera traps at 56 sites located each at least 2 km apart (33 sites in oil palm plantations and 23 in riparian forest), spanning a total area of ~2,000 km² (194‒394 m.a.s.l.) to detect terrestrial medium- and large-sized mammals (>0.5 kg). In the Llanos region, knowledge of the ecology and distribution of most terrestrial mammals is very limited. Therefore, I used multiple approaches (as described below) to address these gaps and understand the responses of mammals to oil palm plantations and other local- and landscapelevel environmental factors in the Colombian Llanos. First, in Chapter 2, I examined how species richness, abundance and composition of terrestrial mammal species differed between oil palm plantations and riparian forests. I also determined the influence of landscape- and habitat-level features on those metrics. Data from 12,403 camera-days revealed that species richness and the community-level composition of mammals differed significantly between oil palm and riparian forest, with site-level richness in oil palm plantations being 47% lower, on average, than in riparian forests. Within plantations, mammalian species…

During the first half of the nineteenth-century Iceland experienced a steady increase in exports. New products were sought after for export by Danish merchants and the peasant farming community responded by increasing the production of the relevant products. The whole period from 1800 to 1850 saw a continuing increase in the exports of sheep products and shark liver oil, which had a common origin in peasant farming production. This period contrasts with the eighteenth century when there was no corresponding growth in exports. The level of exports in the eighteenth century remained overall much the same except during periods of dearth, when it fell. Traditionally the beginning of the modernisation of Icelandic society is dated to around 1880–1910. However, it could be argued that increasing exports of sheep products and shark liver oil after 1800 saw a clear break with the eighteenth-century pattern and that the period should be taken into consideration as being the origin period of economic modernisation in Iceland. This article discusses questions the exclusion not only of the role of peasant farming in the modernisation narrative of Iceland, but also of the Copenhagen merchant houses that organised the goods export from Iceland after 1800.

The nationality issues of interwar Poland’s eastern borderlands ( Kresy ) have been a popular theme in post-war Polish historiography. A considerable part of this historiography has continued the debates of interwar experts and political activists, which revolved around the two interwar censuses and the question of ethnic identity. For this reason, scholars have given priority to statistical evidence in order to determine the national belonging and categorize the inhabitants of the eastern borderlands into particular ethnic and national groups. What is more, they have drawn their conclusions on the assumption that identity is objectively definable by blood ties. I argue that peasant identity in these borderlands was driven by ‘localness’, that is, a specific symbolic universe, set of values and conventions typical of peasant culture. Thus, identity cannot be comprehensively described through ethnic categories alone. In the article, I explore some practices of localness such as the malleable roles people ascribed to others in everyday life. For large groups of peasants, they were of vital importance in the reception of nationbuilding projects.

This study examines the impact of rainfall on oil palm growth and productivity in the Berau region of East Borneo, Indonesia. The research utilized qualitative and quantitative field studies, employing correlation and regression analysis. The study focused on the oil palm plantation area as its subject. Data was collected from a plantation in the Berau region of East Borneo. The plantation has homogeneous plant age (same planting year, 2009) and homogeneous progeny (Scofindo variety) and is included in the company's core plantation. The observation parameters included rainfall, rainy days, fresh fruit bunches, and plant productivity. It was found that rainfall and rainy days have an impact on oil palm productivity. The regression results indicate a positive correlation between rainfall and oil palm productivity, with a correlation coefficient of 0.025109171. However, rainy days have a negative effect on oil palm productivity, with a correlation coefficient of -0.036778304, despite being positively correlated with rainfall. The correlation coefficient of 0.768386269 indicates a direct impact on reducing oil palm productivity. Rainfall indirectly affects oil palm productivity by influencing temperature, humidity, intensity, and length of daily irradiation. These factors directly affect the productivity of oil palm plants.

This study comprises a review of oil palm development and management across landscapes in the tropics. Seven countries have been selected for detailed analysis using surveys of the current literature, mainly spanning the last fifteen years. Indonesia and Malaysia are the obvious leaders in terms of area planted and levels of production and export, but also in literature generated on social and environmental challenges. In Latin America, Colombia is the dominant producer with oil palm expanding in disparate landscapes with a strong focus on palm oil-based biodiesel; and small-scale growers and companies in Peru and Brazil offer contrasting ways of inserting oil palm into the Amazon. Nigeria and Cameroon represent African nations with traditional groves and old plantations in which foreign ‘land grabs’ to establish new oil palm have recently occurred.The literature surveys have been conducted in English and complemented with literature in local languages (Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese and French), and where possible have also included fieldwork. Four major themes are used to structure the argument and maintain a comparative approach. They are: 1) the influence of oil palm expansion in economic development and land use change, especially deforestation; 2) the role of government policies and corporate strategies in shaping oil palm development; 3) the business models commonly used, especially plantations and various types of smallholders, either assisted or independent; and 4) ongoing initiatives towards more sustainable and inclusive oil palm production. This study shows that oil palm development is heavily entrenched in local and national political economies and responses for advancing towards more sustainable oil palm have to look beyond oil palm as a sector and a commodity.

Mapping oil palm-related land use change in Guatemala, 2003–2019: Implications for food security

Oil palm has been identified as one of the key agricultural products that can diversify Nigeria’s economy. However, its production and export have been hampered by capital constraints. Consequently, the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund (ACGSF) was introduced to encourage lending to farmers and agro-processors to enhance agricultural productivity. Therefore, this study aims to determine the effectiveness of ACGSF allocations to the oil palm production subsector. Time series data on oil palm production, as well as data on ACGSF allocations to oil palm and cash crop production, prime lending rate and commercial banks' loans to agriculture were obtained from FAOSTAT and the Central Bank of Nigeria. Vector autoregression, Granger causality and impulse response functions were used to estimate the short-run relationship. The results reveal that ACGSF allocations to the oil palm subsector and commercial banks’ loans to agriculture have negative and positive effects, respectively, on oil palm production. There was unidirectional causality from ACGSF and commercial banks to agriculture to oil palm production. The findings suggest expansion and close monitoring of the ACGSF scheme, and the intensification and esterification of oil palm production. The study shows that estimating the effect of ACGSF on overall agricultural productivity does not provide deep insight into commodity-specific credit packages.

Climate change has significantly impact the economic development and trade of developing countries particularly those largely rely on agriculture. According to the World Bank, oil palm was the main contributor of GDP for Malaysia agriculture. Climate change affects oil palm growth and productivity in a number of ways, including reduction in sex-ration, disrupts the pollination process, abortion of newly produced inflorescence, drops in productivity, and increase in ranges and distribution of pests and diseases. Much of the economic researches devoted to employ production function and Ricardian approach. This study, therefore, focuses to model the effect of climate change on oil palm production by using supply response approach. An annual time series data used for the period of 37 years starting from 1980 until 2016, and Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) co-integration_-employed in achieving the objective of the study. Six econometric models consisting of linear and non-linear equations were constructed by incorporating temperature and rainfall as proxies for climate variable to estimate the yield response model. The results revealed that oil palm production was very negatively affected by changes in temperature compared to changes in rainfall. Meanwhile, the planted area and own price upsurge the supply of palm oil. The results also indicated that Model 3 and Model 6 were the best model to represent the linear and non-linear effect of climate_change on oil palm production, respectively. Quantifying the impact of climate change on palm oil production can help policy makers and relevant stakeholders to determine the best adaptation and mitigation measures.

Oil palm production contributes tremendously to the economies of tropical countries, a location where cultivation takes place. The cultivation of oil palm is usually dominated by smallholders and produces about 40% of global palm oil demand. Therefore, in this study, we aim to investigate the role of smallholder oil palm growers in ensuring palm oil production in a changing climate. This study was based on a conventional literature review. Relevant articles were retrieved using search terms such as “climate change” or “oil palm” or “climate change and oil palm” OR “oil palm smallholders” OR “oil palm growers”. The documents were selected by (i) examining the title of the document, (ii) the abstract (iii) and the content of the document sequentially. Only documents that meet the inclusion criteria were selected for the review. The results of this study demonstrated that global climatic changes have a greater negative effect on oil palm production in the tropics. Rising temperatures result in water stress to the palms, as does variability in rainfall, which reduces productivity, declining floral abortion, increase in pests and diseases infestation, and yield loss. Oil palm smallholder growers contribute immensely to global food security. Smallholders are estimated to manage approximately 40% of the global oil palm planted area, producing 40% of the global palm oil demand. In Africa, smallholders produced more than 60% of palm oil demand, 33% in Papua New Guinea, and 40% in Malaysia. In Latin America, where 87% of oil palm growers are smallholders, they produce over 60% of the demand for palm oil. Oil palm production creates jobs and poverty alleviation, provides the most efficient oil, provides vitamins for body-building, and provides nutritious and healthy food. This study recommends long-term and short-term policies on climate change and oil palm, improved regional academic leadership, with a focus on collaboration with scientists in consumer countries, improved institutional research, and collaboration in research between producer and major consumer countries.

In late 1970s and through 1980s, state control in agricultural marketing was taken as the best for the development of peasant agriculture. Later however, state failure was claimed and the need for market oriented strategy has been advocated. Both had their own impact on peasant producers. This paper discuses their impact on the peasantry. It is found that it should not be a question of statist or markets substituting each other but should operate in a complementary way to improve the agricultural marketing system and enhance peasant agriculture.

African oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) is a perennial crop that offers a variety of products for food, non-food, and medical uses worldwide. Sustainable oil palm development is expected from the species with high genetic diversity within ex situ and in situ populations. From the Guinea golf in Africa, oil palm adapted to the humid tropics of Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, thanks to this high genetic diversity. Indicators of the species’ genetic variability include (i) multiple fruit shell forms, (ii) diverse fruit exocarp color types, and (iii) wide variation of morphological and agronomic characters. The high genetic variability within oil palm materials has been confirmed by molecular marker techniques. As for many other plants, pests and diseases, breeding, and human activities in natural oil palm groves are responsible for genetic erosion or loss of alleles or genes resulting from the death of oil palms, i.e., decreasing population size. In fact, molecular markers have revealed low genetic diversity in breeding populations which are usually smaller than natural collections. Efforts have been taken to preserving oil palm germplasms and to collecting and conserving new materials from the natural oil palm belt in Africa for improved oil palm profitability and for posterity. Constraints in oil palm conservation are the requirements of large space (at 148 palms per hectare) and regular maintenance incurring high upkeep costs. Furthermore, the long-term in vitro conservation techniques have not yet been established and seeds cannot tolerate storage at a low temperature. Fortunately, locals in the African oil palm belt are concerned with the preservation of the species’ natural groves. They select oil palms to fell for palm wine production, maintain existing palm trees, create suitable conditions for the growth of seedlings, and do not cut seedlings during bush clearing or weeding of farms.

Palm oil is a plantation crop that provides the highest economic value in Indonesia. Riau is currently the highest palm oil producing province in Indonesia with a state-run palm oil company, PTPN V. However, palm oil production is not always stable every month, whichexperiences ups and downs in the amount of production and productivity due to several factors including irregular rainfall, climate, soil fertility and most importantly fruit bunches that are not ready to harvest. So the data mining processing process is carried out by predicting the amount of production and productivity of oil palm applying the Support Vector Regression (SVR) algorithm with three kernels such as the Linear kernel, RBF kernel and Polynomial kernel. Experimental results on palm oil production and productivity show that the best kernel is the RBF kernel because the prediction results are close to the actual value. The accurate rate on palm oil production is 75.4% and palm oil productivity produces an accuracy value of 71%. It also produces an error value on palm oil production of 1.8%, for productivity of 2.1%. The results of the study can be used as an estimated picture in the company's future decision making.

Commodity crop expansion has increased with the globalization of production systems and consumer demand, linking distant socio-ecological systems. Oil palm plantations are expanding in the tropics to satisfy growing oilseed and biofuel markets, and much of this expansion has caused extensive deforestation, especially in Asia. In Latin America, palm oil output has doubled since 2001, and the majority of expansion seems to be occurring on non-forested lands. We used MODIS satellite imagery (250 m resolution) to map current oil palm plantations in Latin America and determined prior land use and land cover (LULC) using high-resolution images in Google Earth. In addition, we compiled trade data to determine where Latin American palm oil flows, in order to better understand the underlying drivers of expansion in the region. Based on a sample of 342 032 ha of oil palm plantations across Latin America, we found that 79% replaced previously intervened lands (e.g. pastures, croplands, bananas), primarily cattle pastures (56%). The remaining 21% came from areas that were classified as woody vegetation (e.g. forests), most notably in the Amazon and the Petén region in northern Guatemala. Latin America is a net exporter of palm oil but the majority of palm oil exports (70%) stayed within the region, with Mexico importing about half. Growth of the oil palm sector may be driven by global factors, but environmental and economic outcomes vary between regions (i.e. Asia and Latin America), within regions (i.e. Colombia and Peru), and within single countries (i.e. Guatemala), suggesting that local conditions are influential. The present trend of oil palm expanding onto previously cleared lands, guided by roundtable certifications programs, provides an opportunity for more sustainable development of the oil palm sector in Latin America.

At some point in the 1850s, Andrei Gorlov planted several fruit trees on his farmstead. His neighbours in the village of Bol'shoe Kopanoe, situated on the land mass bordered by Crimea to the south and the Dnieper River to the north, responded with disbelief, envy, and ill will. Villagers broke branches off his saplings as they walked by, or otherwise damaged the trees as much as possible. Still others threatened to gather the entire village assembly and destroy his orchard. But sheer perseverance enabled Gorlov to surmount these difficulties and his steady success in planting and production won the grudging respect of his peers. Soon neighbours appeared at his door for advice on how best to plant and manage their own orchards. By the 1880s almost every one of the 457 households had orchards that averaged no less than 60 trees. Such impressive orchards attracted merchants from distant cities to purchase the harvested fruit, a portion of which was also sold in the expanding urban markets of southern Ukraine.' How extraordinary was the village of Bol'shoe Kopanoe in southern Ukraine before 1900? What motivated Gorlov suddenly to engage in commercial fruit production, and what accounted for the initial ill will shown by fellow villagers? Though we cannot answer these questions in Gorlov's specific instance, this article identifies both the obstacles and catalysts to peasant agricultural innovation in southern Ukraine before 1900. I am especially interested in the development of, and motivation behind, market-oriented agricultural specialization in vegetable and fruit production among peasants of New Russia. Until recently, little attention has previously been given to market gardening in Imperial Russia generally, or southern Ukraine specifically, despite its importance to agricultural economies. At first glance, such neglect might seem appropriate. Agriculture in New Russia was successively dominated by sheep breeding and grain cultivation in the nineteenth century, with the latter predominant by the 1850s. Yet beyond the sheep pastures and wheat fields, peasant fruit orchards flourished in the northern hilly reaches of New Russia, lush market gardens in the environs of Odessa and other cities, and vineyards in the Dniester river valley. Apiculture had made rapid gains in counties along the Dnieper river by 1900. In exceptional instances peasant agriculturalists had abandoned grain cultivation altogether. What prompted the development of peasant market oriented fruit and vegetable production, and what does it tell us about the relationship between the region's peasants and colonists, who comprised more than a tenth of the rural population while owning one fifth of all allotment lands? Finally, what role did the access to markets play in peasant agricultural history? The first half of this article explores the role that fruit and vegetable gardening played in peasant economies of New Russia before the late nineteenth century. My findings correspond with James C. Scott's about peasant villages in contemporary Asia: he calls them precapitalist societies in the sense that they are reluctant to risk and introduce innovations and are motivated by a cautious safety-first principle.4 Ironically, much of the initial expansion in vegetable and fruit production in New Russia also reflected this cautious approach. The fact that peasants of New Russia had a conservative attitude toward agricultural innovation does not mean that they maintained static practices. On the contrary, considerable evidence points to steadily expanding contact between peasant producers in New Russia and regional, national, and international markets. This expansion was stimulated by a growing transportation network, the successful modelling of new agricultural practices by the region's foreign colonists and Orthodox sectarians, and increased zemstvo activity in schools and experimental farms. The second half of the article sketches out this interaction, and the resulting transformation in one aspect of peasant agriculture. …

The impact of oil palm on rural livelihoods and tropical forest landscapes in Latin America