KUALA LUMPUR: The government is proposing to consolidate oil palm smallholder planters to form bigger patches so they will be easier to manage.

       “We were looking at how to help them; instead of four hectares (ha) we will gather them (by grouping them) to up to 10,000 ha. It will not be easy but we will have to start somewhere,” Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities of Malaysia Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani said at the Palm Oil Conference 2024 today.

       “We have to do this, otherwise if we don’t, we will have the issue of so many old oil palm trees cumulatively which will see the entire country's production suddenly coming down. Most of them have benefited from the smallholders initiative given by the government in the last 20-30 years,” he added.

       Johari said the initiative has shown success as many of these small oil palm planters had seen their children graduating and moving into the corporate sector thus having less of an interest in managing a smaller oil palm farm anymore.

       “Some of them are even leading listed companies with so much hectarage thus they are not interested to going back to manage a small farm. So we are looking at how the big companies can help with this consolidation with some government assistance/ intervention,” he said.