What do we need from now?

Sarawak is going to be where the action is for oil palm.

Peninsular Malaysia has already run out of suitable areas and there is little room left in Sabah.

But in Sarawak the planted area can probably be doubled. What does Sarawak need to make it happen? There are many answers but I can think of two for now.

Sabah was ahead in planting of oil palm with the Common­wealth Development Corpora­tion planting in Tawau at the Borneo Abaca Limited estates. Abaca was a type of plant that produced fibre to make rope and bags, now overtaken by other materials.

Oil palm followed. In Sabah the planted areas now are about 1.5 million hectares. Sarawak had nearly one million hectares by the end of 2010. This area could double including NCR land. When fully planted, Sarawak will be the State with the biggest area of oil palm in the country. With larger plantings and im­proved infrastructure, produc­tion volume will go up.

Yet the palms did not originate here. The name Elaeis guineensis implies that the palms were first discovered in the gulf of Guinea countries of West Africa. In my travels I have seen palms grow there, but not fruiting well. The rainfall is uneven, and not enough to support a high crop. I have seen how the local disease called leaf base wilt could kill the palms. Leaf miner insects became a pest by living inside the leaflets as a parasite.

In Guinea weaver birds hung their nests from the fronds, stripping the leaflets as material. The problems included humans as well. Some would cut down the young tree and get the sap to distil into alcohol. In South America a local disease called lethal bud rot slowed the expan­sion of oil palm cultivation.

We can count ourselves lucky that we do not have these problems. In addition we have enjoyed political stability that has allowed the uninterrupted pace of development. I have seen instability and the bullet-scarred houses of Ghana, where agriculture stopped and people were on the verge of famine.

Up the Congo River invest­ment had stopped many years ago when rebels entered the es­tates and imposed their will. In an Asian country I have walked in rubber plan­tations aban­doned due to the danger of landmines left by the civil war.

On the weather front, few areas can match Sarawak’s rain­fall. While peninsular Malaysia has about 2,000 mm a year, in Sarawak the rainfall is more likely to be 4,000 mm per year. The big trunks of the palms need a big supply of moisture and production can be highest in Sarawak providing it has the right management.

Management of plantations is fairly new to Malaysians. In the early days the expatriates used to come from England, via India, and Ceylon, to run the planta­tions. They grew rubber and tea such as in Carson Cumberbatch, or in Harrisons and Crosfield Ltd, and they came to start plantations of coffee and rubber. Many short stories were written by authors including Somerset Maugham whose books are still available in many libraries.

More expatriates arrived, many who saw active service in Malaya in the emergency, or other hot spots including Palestine. Workers came from India, for Sabah it was from Indonesia and Philippines. For management staff, recruitment of local people increased from 1970’s replacing the expatriates as they retired.

This pace worked well with little expansion of the planta­tions. But it was not so effective with the increase in plantings of oil palm. Training did not keep up. While this expansion was going on, Indonesia also began to plant more areas. Most of the old plantations once belonged to the Dutch, nationalised in the Sukarno era, but the explo­sive rate of growth began in the 1980’s.

The local tycoons hired the expatriates who had retired from Malaysia. They led the planting programmes, at a pace not seen before. When the expatriates were ready to give up, the own­ers had turned to experienced Malaysian planters who were lured by higher pay.

That is why until today many of our best planters are working in Indonesia. Some of our best engineers are there building more palm oil mills. Indonesia is now the leading producer of palm oil.

So today we are short of man­agers and engineers. In Sarawak the shortage is severe, including at other levels. The shortage of workers has resulted in losses of millions of ringgit revenue each year. Bunches are not fully harvested, and as fertiliser ap­plication is not done on time, the productivity of the palms begins to drop.

To correct the situation, and to prepare for expansion, we need to increase the intake of people at all levels. The supervisors can be diploma holders selected from colleges. They should have the hunger for knowledge, like the outdoors, excel in games, and indicate they can lead with cour­age to make hard decisions.

After recruitment, they should get lessons on agronomy, ac­counts, planning, monitoring, leadership, and get to know company practices. For man­agement staff, it is likely the candidates will come from universities. They do not have to be graduates in agriculture, as long as they are attracted to plantation work.

What can attract a graduate to plantation life?

He will be free to manage a division of about 1,000 hectares and he can step in any part of that area. He has about 100 workers to get the work done, with help from his supervisors and mandors. When his Division does well he is slotted for further promotion, perhaps to run an estate which would have about three Divisions. He has scope to go higher with more experience and knowledge.

But before he joins he would want to know about his pay and bonus, and other aspects of the package such as a comfortable accommodation to make him feel at home. The employers have to provide them well, so that even the best graduates will join. I suspect this is not happening now.

Potential candidates do not wish to join for often they hear negative views from anti-palm oil lobbies. They are extremely effective in communication and with enough repetition of their views they tend to be believed.

So employers should try to outdo them, give tours on the plantations to students and un­der-graduates, and offer holiday work so they will know about the plantation way of life and the out­doors. Employers have to accept a high wastage, and the intake of trainees therefore has to be higher than before. In my time very little job-hopping was done, but that is not the case today. So there is little risk of having too many management staff.

An assistant manager can act for somebody who goes on leave, or away on courses. He can do special work for the improvement of plantations or mill practices. And he is there to fill a role when a new area is acquired.

These young people will be the leaders sitting in the front seats at meetings when the captains of today will be long gone. With high palm oil prices this is as good a time as any to recruit more cadet planters and engineers, and secondly, to recruit more supervisors. If we recruit massively now, we can develop our plantations to a high standard.

This can be done with the right choice of people, combined with training, knowledge, and experience.