27/7/06 (The Star)  -  ARE we ready to capitalise on the expected increase in palm oil prices? The answer is a sad “no” simply because our palm oil yields had stagnated for so many years. 

While some of the private-sector plantations have made some progress in closing the yield gap with good management practice (GMP) and good agricultural practice (GAP), there is still a lot of room for improvement. 

This lamentation, which has been repeated so often either at national- or international-level conferences yearly, is another wake-up call to the planting fraternity to resolve the yield-stagnation issue quickly. 

While Malaysia is the No. 1 exporter of palm oil in the world, we cannot similarly claim to be the most efficient producer, as we have thus far achieved only 55% to 60% of the targeted eight tonnes of palm oil per hectare. 

There are many “whys” the planting fraternity must answer on our yield stagnation. 

The best persons to provide the answers would be the estate manager (EM) and the chief executive officer (CEO). 

The EM is the implementer of the daily field operations to achieve the best yields and the CEO is the policy maker to provide guidance and support to the EM to attain this achievement with the researchers and others from head office playing a supporting role. 

Basically, everyone has a role to play to ultimately assist the EM to produce the best yields as his primary concern is to ensure that the oil palms produce the highest number of bunches. 

There is also another big question on why expand when we have not managed and tapped the full potential of land productivity on our existing plantations within our shores. We have the experience, expertise, books, knowledge from articles, conference proceedings written by senior planters and researchers who have come and gone and existing planting materials capable of producing 40 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches or more and yet, we still have yield stagnation. 

Basically, we, being in the industry for so long, know what needs to be done to close the gap i.e. managing our human resources to bring out their best to excel in whatever they do to achieve the desired result by putting in the GMP and GAP. 

This is easier said than done. The important point is we can get it done; and we must if we want to sustain our business on our existing land within our shores for many years to come for the betterment of our nation and future generations. 

 

A PRACTICAL PLANTER, 

Subang Jaya.