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

BACKGROUND

Thailand has a high proportion of smallholders working in palm oil production: they farm over 80% of the total area under oil palm production. As a general, smallholders have limited knowledge of sustainable farming practices (such as improving fertilizer use and recycling EFBs, hold great potential for reducing GHG in the palm oil sector), no access to high-quality of planting material (seed) and lack sufficient capital to be able to improve their farms. As a result of these constraints, smallholders in Thailand grow relatively poor-quality produce with low yields, resulting in the inefficient oil extraction rate (OER) in the mills. To date, only a few partnership agreements between stakeholders in the value chain have attempted to address these problems. Support for a broad-based training programme for smallholders is thus vital in order to advance the production of sustainable palm oil, as is the establishment of partnership agreements aimed at tackling the problems of smallholders and oil mills alike.

At present, only around 2% of Thailand’s entire palm oil output is produced by RSPO-certified smallholders and palm oil mills. The large-scale rollout of intensive smallholder training courses is proving difficult for the government. This is due, among other things, to budget constraints as well as to a shortage of well-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 also looking at ways in which the certification process can be expanded even more rapidly, e.g. through certification of an entire jurisdiction. However, there are as yet no schemes in place to do this.

OBJECTIVE

To enable the national governments and relevant stakeholders to be successfully mainstreaming sustainable and climate-friendly production in Thailand

APPROACH

The project closely cooperates with Thai governments to

• Enhance oil palm small-scale farmers’ capacities in achieving an international recognized sustainable palm oil standard (i.e. RSPO) through an intensive Training of Trainer (ToT) curriculum
• Increase demand of sustainable palm oil through creating partnership with private sector along the value chain
• Develop instruments or tools for monitoring and reporting GHG reduction potentials resulting from small-scale farmers adopting the appropriated GHG reduction practices
• Formulate a policy framework upscaling sustainable and climate-friendly production towards “Jurisdictional approach”

PROJECT DURATION

09/2018 – 08/2022

MORE INFORMATION

www.asean-agrifood.org