Dr. Maja Slingerland, associate professor from Wageningen University and Research, gave a guest lecture at Faculty of Agriculture UGM on 2 February 2024. As an expert on palm oil for 15 years, she started her presentation by underlining that farmers are the part of the supply chain which means that farmer is a key for all things. Thus, she is interested in farming systems and look at the social, technical, economical, and other aspects, like what she is doing in The SustainPalm Program.
Dr. Maja explained, SustainPalm Program identifies practices based on ecological and social improvement potential while reducing greenhouse gases and biodiversity through four big activities, including increasing the oil yield, integrating livestock with palm and intercropping, adding value of by-products of palm oil, and finding the alternatives of palm oil on peat.
“If you look at the integration of palm oil and other crops, there are a lot of assumed benefits such as income gap. It means that if you just put palm oil, you have to wait for the palm to produce fruit which takes a few years without any income that you get. So, it is much better if you have something in between the palms to give you annual income and become more resilient,” she added.
Other than that, Dr. Maja explained intercropping system of palm oil with other crops. She showed some cases of intercropping system implementation that she learned. There is an example from Central Kalimantan where palm oil is intercropped with banana and coffee. Next, in Bengkulu, there are 92 hectares of palm oil planted with watermelon. From these intercropping system examples, Dr. Maja underlined that the SustainPalm Program focuses to monitor the economics, effects on palm oil, biodiversity, and reduce the greenhouse gases.
After Dr. Maja’s presentation, the guest lecture continued with a question and answer session moderated by Mr. Andi Syahid Muttaqin, S.Si., M.Si., Ph.D., a lecturer from Department of Soil, Faculty of Agriculture UGM. For the closing statement, Dr. Maja expressed her hope that the guest lecture participants would be inspired to carry out and be involved actively in more research related to sustainable palm oil systems.
This collaboration is also a concrete manifestation of the Faculty of Agriculture UGM’s commitment to achieve SDG 13: Climate Action and SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals.
Author: Hanita Athasari Zain
Photos: Media Faperta UGM