Fueling forest for food

October 17th, 2011 | Posted by iip in Forest - (0 Comments)

Debating biofuel as promising commodity has been months. Some scientits argued that biofuel is not eco-friendly as alternative fuel. Inline with this, recent news of BBC talks about doubt of leaders on biofuel development.

The leaders are Bolivian President Evo Morales and President Alan Garcia of Peru. They warned biofuel development could harmed poor people. In the other hand, UK Prime Minister said that “UK should be more selective in our support for biofuel”

Biofuel development threats forest in tropical area, such Indonesia. Studies link oil palm plantation expansion with deforestation. In fact, it happened in Sumatra and Kalimantan mineral soil, as well as the peat soil. However, producing biodiesel from unsustainable oil palm plantation is unfavorable. (more…)

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Certified palm oil from smallholders

October 16th, 2011 | Posted by iip in Business - (0 Comments)

Smallholder is the important player in Indonesian palm oil business. They contributed significant raw materials for the palm oil processing owned by large scale companies. Low productivity, managing small lands and poor planting materials are common characteristics found in the practices of Indonesian oil palm smallholders.

Smallholder in South Sumatra could be exception as they assisted by the Cargill, a giant multinational company work on agriculture products. Cargill’s smallholders certified their palm oil they produced under RSPO standards.  The certification leads to the premium as they received recently.

How much they received?

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Affordable food

October 14th, 2011 | Posted by iip in Energy - (Comments Off)

I agree with argument on the development of biofuel threatening Indonesia food security. It happen mainly through land conversion. In the next decades, biofuel crops will dominate agricultural land and decreasing forest land.

Today I read a 2006 publication on agricultural land conversion. It says that the accelerating rate of conversion of agricultural lands in mainly caused by very low incentives to work in agriculture compared to industrial and service sectors. I try to link it with biofuel development. (more…)

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