Oil Palm Plantation
When we raise our concern about the good and the bad of market integration and access, we look specifically, among others, at the growing oil palm plantation in Sawesuma. Since 2009, an oil palm company entered the Sawesuma Village area through their negotiations with clan leaders, and through the support of the Papua Provincial government that planned to open up over 3 million hectares of oil palm plantation. In 2011, people whose customary land was rented by the company as oil palm plantation were included as plasma farmers (referring to the nuclear-plasma system in many smallholder plantations in Indonesia; McCarthy & Cramb, 2009) with a profit-sharing mechanism of 20% of the total oil palm harvest on their customary land. A nuclear-plasma system is a system of value chain integration whereby a nuclear plantation, normally run by a corporation, extends its production to the surrounding plasma, which is run by smallholder estates. The plasma would receive agricultural inputs and capital from the nuclear company, and the former would then sell their harvest to the latter. In the process, an industrial upgrading (i.e., a process by which the suppliers learn and acquire new technology and skills from the lead firm, and thus upgrade their capacity; see e.g. Vicol et al, 2018) usually ensues.
Based on this idea of nuclear-plasma, we are rather skeptical on whether the system that is implemented in Sawesuma is indeed such a scheme. There, the community leaders or the members in general are not involved whatsoever with the plantation process, which means that no learning process and upgrading remotely occurs. The community, through the clan leaders, only receive money for every palm oil harvest in their customary land. The claim plasma farmers to serve as a legitimacy of the ‘good will’ that the company offers to the local people to access their land. In our interview, one clan leader seemed to regret his parent’s decision to convert their customary forest to oil palm plantation. He began to feel the change in water quality and access to game. While he rejects any expansion of the oil palm plantation, other clan leaders do not seem to agree with him.