23/11/2010 (The Jakarta Post), Jakarta - Thousands of small-scale farmers have received sustainable palm oil certificates from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), showing their ability to meet international standards on sustainable palm oil, a minister says.

Agriculture Deputy Minister Bayu Krisnamurti said Monday that the RSPO presented its Smallholder Principles and Criteria certificates to 8,797 small-scale farmers of PT Hindoli, a palm oil company located in South Sumatra.

RSPO President Jan Kees Vis handed the certificates to the representatives of South Sumatra’s palm-oil cooperatives on the sidelines of the 8th RSPO meeting in Jakarta from Nov. 8 to 11. “This is a very strategic achievement due to the fact that the RSPO has not presented such certificates to our small-scale oil palm farmers before,” Bayu told The Jakarta Post.

He said that the certificates showed Indonesian farmers’ could work in line with international standards on sustainable palm oil because the farmers were supervised by Cargill Tropical Palm Holdings Pte Ltd, the parent firm of PT Hindoli.

“Our farmers have been able to provide real answers to many baseless criticisms that say the Indonesian palm oil industry has not been sustainable,” he said.

PT Hindoli processes fresh oil-palm bunches supplied by small-scale oil palm farmers, which are organized within 17 cooperatives. The farmers are developing oil-palm plantations on 17,594 hectares.

“We fully support RSPO Smallholder Principles and Criteria to introduce the use of sustainable palm oil products at every level of the supply chain,” Cargill chief executive officer, Angeline Ooi, said as quoted by Sriwijaya Post. —