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Hidden parts of the oil palm industry in Indonesia

Crawford School of Public Policy | Resources, Environment and Development Group

Event details

PhD Seminar

Date & time

Thursday 12 March 2015
12.30pm–1.30pm

Venue

Acton Theatre, Level 1, JG Crawford Building 132, Lennox Crossing, ANU

Speaker

Yusuke Koizumi, PhD scholar, University of Tokyo.

Contacts

Keith Barney
6125 4957

Although urbanisation and industrialisation are at the core of recent economic developments in Indonesia, the agricultural sector, especially oil palm cultivation, still contributes to economic growth. In the outer islands of Indonesia, it is indeed true, as criticised by NGOs, that large oil palm plantations by private companies are powerful enough to take over the land of the local people. At the same time, the number of local people who cultivate oil palm on their own land, whom we call as ‘independent smallholders’, is also dramatically increasing, However, previous studies have not given much attention to the current situation of the expansion of smallholders’ oil palm cultivation.

This research focuses on the mechanism of independent smallholders’ cultivation patterns and the system of the trading networks of oil palm. Since oil palm must be processed in 24 hours after harvesting, oil palm mills should be one of the key factors to understand the expansion of independent smallholders’ cultivation. In this presentation, Yusuke Koizumi will try to explain the basic mechanism of smallholders’ cultivation by mapping out the relations between smallholders and processing mills through Geographic Information System (GIS).

Yusuke Koizumi is a first year student in the PhD program at the Department of Human Geography in the University of Tokyo, specialising in Human Geography and Southeast Asian studies. He currently focuses on the expansion of oil palm cultivation that is producing drastic changes in rural society in Indonesia. The sites of his fieldwork are mainly in North Sumatra and Riau provinces.

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