Sustainable and Climate-Friendly Palm Oil Production and Procurement (SCPOPP) in Thailand

CONTEXT

Thailand has a high number of small-scale farmers or smallholders working in palm oil production: together, they farm more than 80% of the total area under oil palm production. In general, smallholders have limited knowledge of sustainable farming practices (such as improving fertilizer use and applying organic materials; have great potential for reducing GHG in the palm oil sector), and lack sufficient capital to be able to improve their farms. With these constraints, smallholders in Thailand produce low yields, resulting in a low quality of palm oil being extracted in the mills.

As a consequence of smallholders’ constraints, only around 2% of Thailand’s entire palm oil output is produced by Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)-certified smallholders and palm oil mills. Support for a broad-based training programme for smallholders is thus vital in order to improve smallholders’ capacities and advance the production of sustainable palm oil. Even though the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MoAC) has set a policy to promote sustainable agricultural development following the 12^th National Economic and Social Development Plan 2017–2021, the large-scale rollout of intensive smallholder training courses is proving difficult for the government. This is due, amongst other things, to budget constraints as well as a shortage of suitably qualified national instructors. Capacity deficits also exist in the areas of GHG measurement and reporting, which means that mitigation actions cannot be tracked or documented. As a result of these requirements, the Thai government is looking at ways in which the sustainable palm oil production can be expanded even more rapidly, e.g. through certification of an entire jurisdiction.

OBJECTIVE

To enable the national government and relevant stakeholders to mainstream sustainable and climate-friendly palm oil production in Thailand

APPROACHES

The project closely cooperates with the Thai government and palm oil businesses to

• Sustainable Practices: Create qualified national instructors and enhance oil palm smallholders’ capacities in sustainable farming practices and meeting an internationally-recognised sustainable palm oil standard (i.e. RSPO) through an intensive Training of Trainer (ToT) curriculum.
• Partnership development: To promote a cooperation along the value chain for smallholder engagement together with increase awareness and market demand of sustainable palm oil in the country.
• Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reduction: Promote and demonstrate appropriate GHG reduction practices for oil palm cultivation to smallholders. In addition, develop a system for monitoring and reporting GHG reduction.
• Upscaling framework: Recommend a policy framework upscaling sustainable and climate-friendly palm oil production towards an “landscape” or “jurisdictional approach” with a commitment from local government and key stakeholders to ensure that all palm oil produced from one jurisdiction area (i.e. district, province, or national level) is sustainably produced and certified.

RESULTS SO FAR

Sustainable Practices: 

• A total of 75 groups of smallholders with 3,600 farmer members growing oil palm over 12,000 ha in three pilot provinces (Surat Thani, Krabi and Chumphon) have been engaged and benefited from the project’s support.
• An intensive Training of Trainer curriculum and its training materials (such as posters, handbooks, animation, and PowerPoint presentation), the so-called “Thailand Oil Palm Smallholders Academy: TOPSA”, has been completed and rolled out to 38 Master trainers and 250 targeted trainers from lead farmers, local extension officials and mill representatives. So far, these trained trainers have completed the transfer of knowledge to 3,600 smallholders following the TOPSA curriculum.
• Development of a digital database management application for farmers, called “i-Palm”, has been completed. It is introduced to farmers as a supporting tool for
  • filling in their data at farm-level anywhere and automatically see their status
  • tracking farming performance and room for improvement
  • preparing for RSPO certification audit (such as checklist for internal audit)
  • checking GHG emissions and reductions from their plots
• About 400 farmers were RSPO-certified in 2021. Another 1,500 farmers are expected to achieve the RSPO certification within December 2022.
• An online campaign was launched in January 2020 to raise awareness and call for action on supporting sustainable palm oil among the general public and smallholders. Currently, over 130 messages have been posted on the GIZ Facebook page, named “GIZ Farmers Care Earth” and reached out to our fan page with more than 2,000 followers.

 Partnership development:

• Nineteen palm oil mills have engaged with and are willing to cooperate with smallholders with incentives (i.e. source oil palm fruits from smallholders with a fair price based on better quality, support the RSPO membership fee, fast track to deliver oil palm fruits, and office space for farmer groups) through a Partnership Agreement. So far, nine Partnership Agreements have been signed between palm oil mills and smallholder groups.

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reduction:

• A study on appropriate GHG reduction practices has been completed through a series of stakeholder consultations. Five out of twelve practices were assessed, prioritised and recommended as “Appropriate GHG reduction practices for oil palm cultivation”. They are harvesting ripe fruits, optimising fertilisers use (following leaf-soil analysis), mulching empty bunches, planning cover crop, and intercropping, which has been integrated into the TOPSA training curriculum.
• A simplified calculation tool is now ready to use for monitoring and reporting GHG reduction. Moreover, this calculation is further embedded in the i-Palm application.
• Two Oil Palm Research Centres and fifteen farmer plots have been set up in 3 provinces to demonstrate sustainable and climate-friendly practice, including reduction practices for smallholders.

Upscaling Framework:

• A feasibility study on upscaling sustainable and climate-friendly production towards RSPO jurisdictional approach (JA) has been completed through a series of focus group discussions and in-depth stakeholder interviews. The study result was presented and discussed with key stakeholders in Suratthani as well as the national level in 2021.
• The study suggested that Suratthani province is suitable to pilot RSPO JA as it has the largest oil palm planted area in the country. Even though the stakeholders (i.e., farmers, palm oil mills, and local authorities) are interested, local authorities could not fully commit and support the RSPO JA implementation. This is because a national policy framework to support RSPO implementation is still lacking to justify budget and official mandates.

FINANCED BY

German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV)

COUNTRY

Thailand

PROJECT PARTNERS

• Department of Agriculture (DoA)
• Department of Agricultural Extension (DoAE)

PROJECT DURATION

09/2018 – 08/2022

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT PROJECT

1. An introduction to the project
2. Social impact assessment
3. FPIC (Free-Prior-Informed-Consent)
4. Related laws and regulations
5. GIZ ประเทศไทย กับแนวทางสนับสนุนการจัดการสวนปาล์มน้ำมันอย่างยั่งยืน
6. What is ‘sustainable palm oil’ and why on earth do we need it?

MORE INFORMATION

PALM OIL | Sustainable Agrifood System in ASEAN (asean-agrifood.org)