Land-Use Changes and Food Insecurity around Oil Palm Plantations: Evidence at the Village Level

Abstract

Land conversion of oil palm plantations in the villages of West Kalimantan has caused drastic changes in how farmers fulfill their basic household needs. One such change affects farmers’ food security. This study aimed to explain the deterioration of food self-sufficiency at the village level due to the pressure to use residual pockets of land for oil palm cultivation. The collected evidence was analyzed through an assessment of their residual pockets of land in a single village. A case study survey collected data from July until September 2019 in the village of Batu Barat, district of Kayong Utara, West Kalimantan Province, Indonesia. The study utilized 70 family heads as samples for interviews. They were selected through a simple random sampling technique. We used descriptive quantitative and qualitative methods in our investigation. The results confirmed that the current utilization of the village’s residual lands actually entails even greater food insecurity for farmers, as exemplified by a sizeable decrease in rice fields to merely an estimated 0.59 hectares per household. By contrast, the land utilized by independent smallholders of oil palm cultivation increased to an average of approximately 0.67 hectares per household. This land conversion not only exacerbated food-farmland availability but

Assessing the Current State and Future Trends of Land Use Conversion: Implications for Food Security in Indonesia

“…The research on the effects of land conversion for oil palm monoculture on food security in Indonesia highlights several significant implications (Sudrajat et al, 2021). One key impact is the decrease in rice fields per household, leading to a reduction in food self-sufficiency at the village level .…”

Menyalurkan Informasi dan Meninjau Gangguan Produktivitas TBS Kebun Sawit Penduduk di Desa Saliki (Kecamatan Muara Badak, Kabupaten Kutai Kartanegara)

“…Adapun iklim di area Kutai Kartanegara dan sekitarnya, termasuk Kecamatan Muara Badak, rerata curah hujan tahunan mencapai 1.774,41 mm atau sangat sesuai (S1), rerata suhu 300C, dan bulan kering (2-3 bulan) per tahun cukup sesuai (S2), iklim tersebut menggambarkan produktivitas yang optimal, sehingga faktor iklim bukan pembatas (Asnidar et al, 2021). Fokus untuk menemukan dan menganalisis faktor pembatas mengacu penyelidikan tanah kebun kelapa sawit dalam menemukan sebuah solusi (Sudrajat et al, 2021). Berdasarkan telaah lapangan, bahwa lokasi kebun berada pada area datar, dengan kedalaman tanah diatas 1,2 m (dalam), kelas tekstur agak halus hingga halus, dan dengan drainase yang tergolong agak baik sampai dengan baik, oleh karena itu, faktor fisik tanah sangat mendukung aktivitas perkebunan kelapa sawit.…”

Revisiting the Implications of RSPO Smallholder Certification Relative to Farm Productivity in Riau, Indonesia

“…However, the high land expansion of oil palm plantations in the tropics has made it one of the most controversial commodities traded globally, primarily due to social and tenurial conflicts (Lai et al, 2022;Rustiadi & Veriasa, 2022), environmental impacts (Ivancic & Koh, 2016;Purnomo et al, 2018;Tacconi et al, 2019), overlapping oil palm plantation land with forests rich in biodiversity and carbon (Murphy et al, 2021;Pacheco et al, 2020;Tacconi et al, 2019;Xu et al, 2022) and the reduction of wildlife habitat (Cazzolla & Velichevskaya, 2020;Geldmann et al, 2019), and the rapid change of land use to oil palm causing food insecurity (Sudrajat et al, 2021).…”