Tuesday, May 7, 2002 (The Star) - MALAYSIA is aiming at an annualproduction of four tonnes of palm oil for every hectare of oil palmbeginning next year.Primary Industries Minister Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik said the palm oilindustry needed to be serious about achieving the production target, asnot meeting it could mean a big loss for the country.Citing an example, he said the country should have earned RM1.2bil morelast year if the average four tonnes per hectare had been achieved basedon an average price of RM1,000 per tonne of palm oil.Dr Lim said that in the last 10 years (1992–2001), the average annualproduction of palm oil had not changed much from 3.5 tonnes per hectareLast year, the average production was 3.7 tonnes.“Oil palm is the most productive plant, with the capacity to produce eightto 10 tonnes of palm oil annually, beating other oilseed crops.“However, the national productivity level has not changed and indeed ithas not even reached half the capacity of its real potential,’’ he said inhis address at the opening of the “MPOB Transfer of Technology 2002’’ and “On Elevating The National Oil Palm Productivity and Recent Progress in theManagement of Peat and Ganoderma,’’ seminar in Bangi yesterday.And in line with the new production target, the Malaysian Palm Oil Board(MPOB) has been directed to launch a productivity campaign, Four TonnesCampaign, among the production sector throughout the country to increaseawareness as well to encourage and boost production capacity.Dr Lim said the campaign would pay more attention to the smallholdersector.There are 92,000 smallholders working on a total oil palm plantation areaof 380,000ha or 11% of the total oil palm land in the country.According to an MPOB survey, the average production capacity of asmallholder at 14 to 15 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches per hectare was muchsmaller than the 20 tonnes produced by the estate sector. — Bernama(The informations and opinions expressed in this article represent theviews of the author only. They should not be seen as necessarilyreflecting the views of Palm News)