Narrator: The following presentation
is part of the Agronomy and Horticulture Seminar Series
at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
Host: Now welcome to the Agronomy Horticulture
Seminar Series for spring of 2021.
I get the pleasure to introduce
and host Patricio Grassini today.
Patricio Grassini is actually a Systems Agronomist
in the Department of Agronomy Horticulture,
he has been here since about 2013.
His role has been primarily working
with things like yield forecasting,
as Yield Forecasting Center for the Midwest.
He's also been involved
with the soybean benchmarking projects
that have been going across the Midwestern U.S.
and then for a long time he's been involved
with this Global Yield Gap Atlas project.
That's kind of an international project
that's been going on for at least 10 years
but maybe he'll give us more background on that,
the full background on that.
Patricio has been,
well he has a 70% research,
30% extension appointment
and he's been very productive over the years.
He's published many papers
over the last several years anyway in each year
and has been listed on the Web of Science
list of Highly Cited Researchers.
He's very productive,
he's has a great connections throughout the world
and some of these things that he's working on
and one of the projects that he got involved
with this is to get the Global Yield Gap Atlas
involved with oil palm in Indonesia
and that's what he's going to talk about today.
So Patricio?
Patricio: Well, thank you very much John
for a very generous introduction
and also thanks very much to the seminar committee
for giving me the chance to talk about our project
on Oil Palm in Indonesia.
So let's get it started.
All right so I'm gonna give you some background
about the oil Palm because I'm assuming that most
of you is probably the first time
that you are hearing about this.
Oil palm is the most important source
of vegetable oil in the world.
You are probably surrounded by oil palm
although you may not know that.
But in the morning when you shave
or when you get a shower
you are using oil palm in the shampoo,
in the creams, in the perfume, on everything.
When you eat, you're eating oil palm
and if you are now eating a cookie bread,
that cookie also has oil palm.
What about miss oreo?
It can be used for so many products
that you cannot imagine.
The the commodity is called crude palm oil (CPO)
and that's the major source,
is one of the major source of income for Indonesia
which is the biggest producer of this commodity,
producing about 40 million tons per year.
And there are about 14 million hectares
of land planted with oil palm in Indonesia,
at least based on the statistics by year 2018,
probably they are closer to 16 nowadays.
But this is an example of a large plantation
located in Sumatra.
Roughly 50% of the oil palm in Indonesia
is managed by private companies
and each farm,
each state can include thousands of hectares
planting oil palm.
You can see the extent of this field.
On the other hand about 50% of the oil palm in Indonesia
is managed by smallholders.
This is a pictures that I took in Kalimantan,
in Borneo
and these are smallholders account
for about 50% of the oil palm area in the country.
In each of these smallholders manage
an area of about two hectares.
So if you do the math 6 million hectares
divided by two hectares of oil palm,
that gives you the number of 3 million
oil palm in smallholders.
And you need to add on top of that
all the relatives are also depending
on the oil palm production.
So as you can see,
a lot of people depends on oil palm in Indonesia.
And either you're a large or a small farmer,
this is what you're looking for.
This picture here shows the bunches,
the oil palm bunches
they're called fresh fruit bunches (FFB).
That's what the farmers get paid for
and typically the,
you get the oil extraction rate
from these bunches is an average 20%.
Each of these bunches weight around 20 kilograms
and they have up to 3000 fruits per bunch.
And this is how each of the individual fruits look like
and if you take one of these individual fruits
the concentration of oil is around 40 to 55%.
All right so oil palm is a brilliant crop,
in it's high-yield.
In this schema here
shows the typical annual yield versus age pattern
for a well managed oil Palm plantation.
Note that I'm expressing, yield here as FFB,
that's the fresh fruit bunches in tons per hectare per year,
But also on the right axis I'm showing the oil yield
which is basically the product of FFB times 0.2,
which is the average extraction rate.
In a normal plantation,
there are two, three years after planting when
there is no bunch production.
After that the plantation start to produce its bunches
and the productivity steeped up
until it reaches a peak around the years seven or so.
And after that the plantation would go through
a gradual decline in productivity
until it gets replanted around year 25.
The reason why the plantation gets replanted around 25
is because of the declining productivity,
but also because of the palms just get too high,
too tall to get harvest.
Now, just to give you an idea about
how the oil palm productivity compares with other crops.
You can see here the annual product,
the annual oil productivity for soybean, canola
and sunflower average for oil crops as well.
And you can see how much all oil palms produces
compared with these other crops.
So there is a good reason why oil palm
is a major source of oil globally.
Now let's talk a little bit
about yield formation in oil palm.
If you go to a plantation,
you will find around 150 palm trees per hectare
and you will find bunches
that are at a very different stage of development.
So how is that possible?
If you dissect upon,
what you will find is that there is a new leaf
initiated every two weeks,
in associated with that leaf
there is these small inflorescence,
these are primordial.
And this is what in near future is gonna become a bunch.
In this case these are female primordial,
which if everything goes well in 40 months
will become a ripe bunch that can be harvested.
Now six differentiation of that primordial,
in the survival of that primordial
is highly dependent on the management and the environment.
So for example,
if the management is poor
or if the Palm is growing in a stressful environment
you will find that there are more male inflorescence
compared with females inflorescence
and you will also find a higher rate of abortion
of those inflorescence.
Something that is important to consider here
is that because of this long period
between initiation and bunch ripeness,
whatever we do now in terms of management
of the plantation will have an effect later on.
So for example,
if I apply fertilizer today
I will see the full effect
of that fertilizer on yield 40 months down the road.
So there is this time lag associated with implementation
of a management practices
and the impact in yield
that is very unique of oil palm compared with other crops.
So if you go to a field and you see
a palm with loose fruits around the trunk,
that means that that palm has a bunch
that can be harvested,
that's what farmers uses to tell
when the bunches are ready to be harvested.
But because there are bunches ripening all the time
then farmers need to pretty much go to the field
every Sunday to check which bunches are ready
to be harvested and which ones not.
Going there every day it's just too labor intensive,
so typically farmers will go to the field
two, three times per month.
If they go more than that involves too much labor,
if they go less than that
that means that there will be lot of harvest losses.
So two to 3 harvest rounds is the right compromise
between minimizing labor while making sure
to minimize the harvest losses.
In all cases the harvest is manual
as you can see in the picture here in the middle
and these bunches are brought
to the edge of the field
where a middle man comes with a small truck,
weights the bunches,
the farmer gets paid,
and this middle man will bring all the bunches
to the mill where the oil is extracted.
Okay, so what's the theory with oil palm?
The theory is that during the past 20 years
the CPO production has mostly increased
at the expense of area expansion.
Indonesia has been expanding the oil palm area
at the rate of a half million hectares per year.
So every year half million hectares
of land are converted for oil palm cultivation.
And during the same time period
there has been no increase on average yield.
So basically all increasing production
in the past two decades has been
at the expense of increasing area
with no increasing productivity.
And one third of the converted land,
is accounted by forest and peatlands.
And looking forward,
the demand for oil palm is expected to increase
at least by 50% but that demand is expected
to be even higher because of the recent mandates
on CPO-based biodiesel.
And therefore there are concerns
about further land conversion
for oil palm cultivation and the associated loss
in biodiversity and emissions of greenhouse gases.
In along those lines Indonesia has committed
to different programs to reduce deforestation
and greenhouse gas emissions.
So as you can see,
this is a country that has
many potentially conflicting goals.
And so we have here oil Palm
and we have here forest competing for land
and fortunately we know who is gonna win
and who is gonna lose.
And in some of these environmental issues
related with oil palm cultivation in Indonesia
has been picked and highlighted by the media
sometimes making long stretches.
In along those press news,
there has been a strong campaign
and also policy to ban oil palm export from Indonesia
or to reduce oil palm products with a good intention
of protecting their forest and the peatlands.
However, these efforts have not led
to any real solutions agenda that stop deforestation.
And one of the reasons is that
these approaches neglect the simple fact that
Indonesia is producing oil palm
because the world is demanding more oil palm.
And embodying oil palm will simply shift the problem
from oil palm in Indonesia to another crop in another region
for example soybeans in Brazil or some other case.
So as you can see,
we have very contrasting positions here.
On one side we have Indonesia's aspirations to develop,
a millions of farmers who want to produce more oil palm
as a way to get out of poverty
and on the other side We have developed countries
asking Indonesia to not produce oil palm
because they want to conserve the rainforest.
So how do we get out of this as one?
One of the things that is clear is
that we cannot simply ask developing countries
to give up on their economic goals
to fit the environmental agenda of developed countries.
And therefore what is really needed here
is a solutions agenda that seeks to find a compromise
between production and environmental goal
and this idea has been very nicely summarized
by Mike Shellenberger who is an environmental activist
and he says that "If we are to protect the
"world's remaining forest we are going to need
"to reject the environmental colonialism
"and support nations in the aspirations to develop."
So bottom line is that we need to find a compromise
here between economic aspirations and protection goals.
So along those lines,
our project here aims to understand
to which degree intensification of existing
oil palm area can help Indonesia
to reconcile the production and environmental goals.
Understanding that intensification,
which is understood as increasing in year,
intensification is only just one piece of the challenge.
It needs to be complemented
with appropriate policy and institutions to make sure
that there is land sparing for nature.
But again,
our idea here is to see to which degree
increasing productivity on the existing oil palm area
in Indonesia can help the country
to reconcile this conflicting goals.
This is a project that has started
about two to three years ago
and it's being funded by the Norwegian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs at the level of 4 million dollars.
This is the core team and involves
mostly researchers from University of Nebraska.
But those in both partners from Indonesia
including the Indonesian Oil Palm Research Institute,
The Indonesian Agency for Agricultural Research
and Development which will be the equivalent
of the USDA in Indonesia
and also the University of Indonesia.
And then we are also partnering with a number
of local NGOs who are the responsible to
collect the local data.
This is not the whole team.
because we also have a number of partial workers
that help us with,
to collect the data and with experiments.
So overall there are,
I will say no less than a hundred people
involved in this project
and sometimes I'm having trouble to sleep
at night thinking how many can,
on how many people depends on our project.
So the very first phase of this project
was about estimating the size of the yield gap.
We wanted to understand how much below farmers
oil palm plantations were in relation
to the potential productivity.
Now, and this shows estimatically the yield potential
for an oil palm plantation
in which the yield potential is driven by the light,
by the temperature, by carbon dioxide,
the water supply by soil type,
and also the age of the plantation.
Now reaching the yield potential
it's very difficult.
It requires a lot of inputs
and requires logistics that are not applicable
really in commercial plantations.
And therefore a more realistic goal
for plantations is to reach about 75%
of the yield potential
which we call here as attainable yield.
So trying to shoot for that attainable yield,
is something reasonable for farmers
who seek to maximize profit.
And then we have the third production level
that corresponds to the actual average productivity
which in most cases is limited by nutrients,
pests, poor management, poor planting material.
And the difference between this attainable yield
and this average plant yield,
plantation yield is the exploitable yield gap.
In understanding the size of the yield gap
is very important
because it's telling us how much extra oil palm
Indonesia can produce on existing plantation
without need to further convert land for plantation.
So again in this first of,
in this very first phase of the project,
we aim to estimate the size of this yield gap
to understand to which degree
Indonesia can meet the future demand for oil palm
on existing plantation area.
To accomplish that goal,
we follow a quite complex protocol.
As you can imagine estimating the yield gap
for perennial crops it's not the easiest thing.
So we have to adapt many things that we usually apply
for other crops.
So this in a nutshell the them
the protocol that we follow
to estimate the yield gap for oil palm
we started by selecting a number
of representative locations where oil palm
is grown in Indonesia.
For each of those sites we collected weather data
that we have to use to estimate the yield potential
because the yield potential depends on weather.
And also because yield potential depends on soil,
we have to collect information
about the dominant mineral soil
in each of these places across the country.
And as I explained before,
there are two different farm types in Indonesia,
large plantations, smallholders
and we have to collect information separately
for each of these farmer topologies
and also in separate information
on the actual average productivity.
We use crop modeling to estimate the yield potential,
we fed those models with the word three times
the soil data to estimate the yield potential
for each of these sides across the country.
And eventually we compare the yield potential
simulated by our models
against the average productivity reported
for a smallholders and large plantations
to arrive to an estimate of yield gaps
for each of these two farmer categories.
And this is a snapshot of the results on yield gaps
for the sites for which we estimate
the yield gaps in Indonesia.
So in this figure you will see these pie charts.
The important thing to know here is that
the yellow portion of the pie corresponds
to the average yield,
the red portion of the pie corresponds to the yield gap.
So if you see a small portion of red
that means that the yield gap is small.
If you see a large portion of the pie covered in red
that means that the large,
that the yield gap is large.
And in general you can see that
the yield gaps are quite small in Sumatra Island,
they are larger in Borneo,
but on average for large plantations in Indonesia,
the exploitable yield gap
is around 11.9 tons per hectare per year,
which when expressed relative to the yield potential
for large plantations is equivalent to 38%.
So in other words,
large plantations in Indonesia
are producing 38% below their potential.
All right so this is,
this map corresponds to large plantations.
In the next slide I'm gonna show the same information,
but for a smallholders
and you will see more red in this map.
And that means that the exploitable yield gap
is larger for a small holders.
And on average at the country level,
the smallholders yields are only half
of the attainable yield.
Which means that there is,
especially for a small holders a large,
a big opportunity there to produce more
on the existing plantation.
So again moderate yield gap for large plantations,
very large yield gaps for a smallholders.
Now, what does it mean for Indonesia?
All these yield gaps.
What's the opportunity cost associated
with this yield gaps?
In this table You can see the two farm types,
the large plantations and the smallholders
and you can also see the average for Indonesia.
This is the current area for each farmer type.
This is the current exploitable yield gap
and this is the extra production potential.
So if we do some simple math here
and we multiply area by the exploitable yield gap,
that is gonna tell us how much more oil palm
Indonesia can produce if they close their existing gap.
So if we sum up the extra production potential,
derived from yield gap closure in large plantations,
in a small holders,
the sum tell us that Indonesia
can potentially produce 64% more oil palm
on the existing plantation area.
We don't need to expand into forest,
we don't need to expand into peatlands.
Now these are excellent good news,
but the problem is that this number
they don't tell us too much unless we compare them
against the future expected demand for oil palm
and also understanding what's the timeline
to reach that demand
and what's the rate at which we can close the gap.
So we did some scenario analysis
looking at a year 2035
that's 15 years down the road.
In this field here what you can see on the vertical axis
is the FFB production,
the fresh fruit bunches production.
On the horizontal axis is the harvested area
and these lines represents different yield levels.
This is the,
these lines corresponds to 18 tons per hectare,
these lines corresponds to 30 tons per hectare.
This gray circle here on the lower left corner,
represents Indonesia production around year 2000.
This other cycle represents Indonesia production
by year 2018.
And this horizontal dash lines corresponds
to the expected oil palm demand by year 2035.
So this is the past,
this is the present
and this is where Indonesia is gonna be in 15 years.
Now, if we look backwards
we can see that from year 2000
between the year 2000 and year 2018
Indonesia increased the production from near 50
up to 200 million tons of FFB per year.
But that was,
can be percent at the expense of more area in Indonesia
converted 9 million hectares of land
for oil palm production.
Now lets try to explore the future.
If we first explore a business as usually scenario
in which Indonesia basically kept going
with the same model of land use expansion
without any yield increase,
that that will take Indonesia
to the promise land in terms of production goal.
But that will be at the expense
of an extra 8.5 million hectares of new land
which is roughly equivalent to half Nebraska.
Now, if we explore a second scenario
where we imagined for one moment,
that all oil Palm farmers in Indonesia
will close the exploitable yield gap
on existing plantation area without any expansion,
that has also the potential to bring Indonesia
above the production goal by year 2035.
So, but that will also require
very high rates of annual yield gains
so that Indonesia will need
to increase average oil palm yields
by 700 kilos per hectare per year,
which is very high.
And it almost sounds like a miracle
if we take into consideration
that average yields have remained the same
over the past 20 years.
So probably a more realistic preference scenario
would be one in which we allow some selective expansion
avoiding peatlands in forest
and at the same time we try to close the yield gap
by increasing yields at rates
that are more reasonable around 200 kilos
of FFB per hectare per year,
which is comparable to the rates
that we achieve at global level
for major food crops such as rice, maze, and wheat.
And by following this scenario,
you can see that Indonesia will also
reach the production goals.
Now, bottom line is that the three scenarios
will allow us to reach the production goal by year 2035
but the how is very different.
If Indonesia follows the business as usually scenario,
the production goal is met at the expense
of 9 million hectares of land.
With intensification,
as shown here with the second and third scenario
the land requirement is smaller
and our chances to save peatlands
and rainforests are higher.
So the main messages from this first phase
of the project are that
first that there is a large exploitable yield gap
in current oil palm plantations about 42%.
So on average plantations are producing 42%
below their potential or the attainable yield,
with larger gaps in a smallholder farms.
Indonesia can potentially produce 64 more
of Palm oil on existing plantation area
located in mineral soils,
but time may not be on our side.
Meeting the CPO goal by year 2035
only through intensification would require rates
of yield gains that are very high
and very unlikely to occur .
And as I showed members is
a more realistic preferred scenario would be one
in which we allow some land expansion
in avoiding peatlands,
avoiding prime forest
and we aspire for more realistic yield gains.
And in that approach,
we'll save nearly 3 million hectares
of forest in peatlands and avoid a big amount
of emissions compared to follow
in the historical trajectories on yield land-use change.
All right, so I'm now gonna switch
into the solutions agenda.
About a year ago we have a study with a second phase
of this project where we aim to close the yield gap.
Specifically, what we're trying to accomplish here
is to first identify the causes for the yield gaps
and evaluate cost-effective management practices
to increase oil palm yields in smallholders plantations
located in mineral soils in Indonesia.
So again,
our second phase of the project targets a smallholders
and we are trying to close the exploitable yield gaps.
We are working in six sites across the province.
I guess that you're now familiar
with the geography of Indonesia,
but basically this Island here is Sumatra.
This one here is Kalimantan or Borneo,
that's how most Westerners know it.
And we are working in these three provinces,
Riau here, Jambi, south Sumatra
and also in West, Central and East Kalimantan.
Our places are located in mineral soils,
not in pillars and they're located
far from the areas where oil palm is expanded
because we don't want our intensification
to promote land expansion.
So there are two main activities associated
with this project.
One is a survey of 200 farmers in each province,
total of 1200 farmers
including agronomic and socio-economic factors.
It also field land survey in which
our experts go to the field
and measure a number of things.
And the objective of these activities
is to identify the causes for the yield gap.
The second main activity is to run field trials
to demonstrate the effectiveness
of best management practices (BMPs)
in increasing yield and profit for smallholders
and hopefully to help develop a solutions agenda.
This is our map that corresponds
to one of our villages in this case is,
the village seems like Kalimantan.
Each of these polygons corresponds
to one of the 200 farmers in this village
that we are working with.
And you can see that these fields are quite small.
In an average, each of these smallholders manage an area
of two hectares planted with oil palm.
What do we know on those 200 fields?
First of all we have run our baseline survey
across the 200 farmers
to understand a little bit
about their socioeconomic background.
To understand something about their thinking skills.
That baseline survey was run at the beginning
of the project,
is a one time survey
and it was conducted by our NGOs partners.
That survey also included a very detailed mapping
of the farmer field,
because sometimes farmers will tell you
that the area is maybe two hectors
but when you go there it's about 1.5
and that really matters
because then when you're trying to estimate yield
a small discrepancies in areas will result
into a huge bias in terms of productivity per area.
After we conducted this initial baseline survey
we started to run these farmer daily diary
in which each farmer is asked to keep a diary
in which they will take records
of their management practices on their oil palm fields.
So every time these farmers harvest and they sell FFB,
they need to record it,
they need to indicate how much got paid for that oil palm,
they need also to indicate every time they fertilize
or they without in a year
to explain how much labor they use,
what was the cost of the labor.
The objective of these diaries is to have an idea
about the productivity of these fields
as well as the profit of these farmers.
And then finally there is this land surveying.
Is a one time salary again
which has already been completed for three provinces.
And what we're doing here is we are sending experts
from Indonesian Oil Palm Research Institute
who go to the field,
they collect information about the soil type,
the planting material,
the management of that field.
And eventually all this information is sent
to our UNL data manager who compile information
apply very rigorous quality control measures
and try to link all this information in our database.
As you can see, it's a quite complex
big project that requires a lot of coordination
and all that from Nebraska.
All right, so let's take a helicopter view
about some of the key social economic
and agronomic practices associated with these smallholders.
This is a quite rich table,
so I will try to simplify it for you.
And what you have here are the different provinces,
so the six provinces are here in the columns
and then on the right hand you can see
the averages across provinces.
So for the sake of simplicity,
I will say that we focus here on this column
that shows the averages across provinces.
And then each rows corresponds
to a different socioeconomic or agronomic variable
that I pick because I thought that
it was gonna be of your interest.
We have measured many other variables,
but here I just sample a few of them
to give you an idea about the background
of these smallholders.
All right, So as you can see here from this information
these farmers are managing on average two hectares of land,
planted with oil palm.
But although that sounds like a small area,
those two hectares of oil palm account
for 50% or more of their annual household income.
So whatever we do here to increase the yield and the profit
of those 200 of land,
we have a tremendous impact
of the livelihoods of the farmers and their families.
Okay, another interesting thing is that
these farmers have not grown oil palm for generations.
This is not like a Nebraska soybean or corn grower
who have two or three generations behind
of a relative farming those crops.
In this case we're talking about farmers
who have grown oil palm for no more than 10 years,
is their first generation of farmers growing oil palm.
And in most of the cases
these farmers have not gone into middle or high school,
they just completed the elementary school.
Which means that if we are gonna try to cut the farmers,
we need to simplify complexity
in translating into very simple technical messages
that farmers can understand
and eventually consider to implement on their fields.
And what is about access to work input?
This is more harder
it seems to have reasonable access to inputs,
considering that 60% of them reported that they can access
and afford some key inputs,
such as fertilizer and country research and so forth.
So these are not like for smallholders in Africa
that cannot purchase inputs.
These farmers can afford inputs.
But now the question is,
what kind of inputs are they gonna purchase?
Because when you,
when we ask them about the source
of technically information,
more than three quarters of the farmer reported
that the source of technical information
is their own experience or the experience of their neighbors
which have not grown oil palm
for more than 10 years as them.
So even though the farmers may have access to input,
that doesn't mean that they're necessarily accessing
the right inputs that they need
to close a year gap for oil palm.
And then when we go into the agronomic aspects,
we found out many things that the farmers can do
to improve their productivity.
And many of them are not really related with inputs
but rather to knowledge inputs,
knowledge gaps.
So we found that the engineer
these farmers will follow suboptimal criteria for harvest,
there is very severe with infestation on their fields.
Most of them prune the Palm trees incorrectly.
So there are many things here to improve
that are not necessarily related with inputs
in the sense of technologies,
but more related with knowledge.
So let's take now a look of the productivity data
from these farmers.
So this is a figure that I showed before
which shows the yield potential here in blue,
and it shows the attainable yield.
So this is a FFB yield plotted against the palm age
and this is where a farmer should be
with good management practices.
Now in the next slide,
I'm gonna show the next slide
but I'm gonna include the yield data
from the 1,200 farmers that we're working with
in this project.
Here it is.
So each of the points shown in this figure
corresponds to one smallholder or palm field.
You can see a lot of variation here,
but you can see that in general
most of these points are way below
our attainable yield benchmark here.
The attainable,
the average attainable yield of this plantation
is around 33 tons per hectare per year.
That's where farmers should be with good agronomy,
but in the real world the farmers are operating
at only 14 tons per hectare, per year
which is about 42% of that general year.
So as you can see here,
a huge a yield gap that they eventually can be
exploited to increase the productivity and profit
of these farmers, improve the livelihoods
and eventually help Indonesia
to produce more oil palm on existing plantation area.
Now, there are two things I would like to highlight here.
One is that if we look at the,
if we compare the average yield
of these smallholder fields for each age
against our attainable yield curve shown here in green
but you can see that these farmers are completely
missing the productivity peaks
that should happen around the seventh year or so
which highlights the importance
of good agronomic practices
from very early on in the plantation cycle,
even at the nursery.
So these farmers are paying here
probably for a bad management in the nursery
where these palms were initially grown.
Now, another interesting finding here
was that even though on average
these farmers are below the attainable yield,
there are some farmers that are approaching
that attainable yield
while others are well below the attainable yield,
which means that probably these farmers
are doing something that these farmers are not doing
which allow them to achieve higher productivity
and get so close to these attainable yield curve.
So our hypothesis here is that
if we compare what's going on
in these high yield fields in terms of management
versus the management of the low yield fields
then maybe we can learn
what are the key management factors
that are explaining yield gaps in this small fields
and eventually use that information
to develop interventions that can help the farmers
to close the yield gaps.
So what we did was,
we took the population of farmers yields
in each of these provinces
and we compare the practices of this group of farmers
against the practices of this other group of farmers.
These metrics here shows the results
from the analysis.
Columns corresponds to provinces
and rows corresponds to different management practices.
So whenever you see a cell in green color in this matrix
that means that we found the high yield fields
to be different from the low yield fields
for this practice.
So if we take for example,
if we take as an example
this cell here for Riau,
this green color is telling us
that the harvest interval was different
in the high yield fields
compared with the low yield fields.
This analysis is not perfect
but they give us a first indication
about what are the likely factors explaining
the yield gaps in the smallholder farmers.
And also it can tell you how consistent
those yield limiting factors are among provinces.
In some cases you can see that there is evidence
that one factor explains yield gaps across all provinces
as it is the case for harvest interval and for fertilizer.
Well in other cases you can see that,
that factor may explain yield gaps in some provinces
but not in our province.
But again this kind of analysis
even though it's kind of course
it gives us a starting point to start looking
in more detail for the likely causes of yield gaps
in smallholder farms.
So let's go now into more detail about
these possible yield limiting factors.
This six chart here show the relationship between FFB yield
on an annual basis and the average harvest interval.
So basically 10 minutes that the farmer goes
to the farmer to sorry,
10 minutes that the farmer goes every day
to that field to harvest,
30 minutes that that farmers go
to the field every month to harvest.
And what we found, although there is a lot
of scattering what we found is that there was
a statistically significant negative correlation
between the FFB yield with the average harvest interval
which is explained by the fact
that as the harvest interval increases
the harvest losses also increases.
So again, this is something that is not so much related
with inputs rather than knowledge.
This is,
they will be something kind of very easy
to implement by farmers
to increase their productivity.
All right, let's look at now
into fertilizers because our previous analysis
also indicate that fertilizers use
maybe behind the yield gaps.
This table here shows the external nutrient inputs
as fertilizers or manure,
the amount of nutrients are removed with FFB
in the balance between the two things.
And we compute these balances for three key nutrients
nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium
and we did that for the six provinces.
And on the right hand you have the averages
across the six provinces.
Again, for the sake of focusing on one column
I would suggest that we all look here
at the column on the right hand.
In general what we found was that
the nutrient input application
with manure or fertilizer is quite low
for so over one year they average,
nitrogen input average 30 kilos,
in the case of P and K seven and 19 kilos.
Note that these amounts are expressed as element,
as elementary nutrients.
You can see that the removal
in the case of nitrogen and potassium exceeds
the amount of inputs
which leads to negative nutrient balances
for nitrogen and for potassium
and for a neutral balance for phosphorus.
One of the reasons why the potassium balance
is so negative is because oil Palm
has many oil seeds,
extracts comparably more potassium
than nitrogen and phosphorous
which is very different from the typical cereal crops.
So the combination of low nutrient inputs
in high potassium in nitrogen extraction
leads to these negative nutrient balances
in the smallholder farms.
Now, this is kind of interesting
because these smallholders are achieving very low yields
and on top of that they are mining their soil.
So you can see that the situation is kind of very bad here
because the productivity is low
and on top of that
these smallholders are mining the soil nutrients.
And another reason for this nutrient
for this negative nutrient balances,
is related with the current
fertilization subsidy program in Indonesia.
These table are here shows
the most common fertilizer sources used in Indonesia
including Phonska, urea, MOP, and NPK.
And the message here is
that farmers are using subsidize fertilizer,
which in most cases are poor in potassium and magnesium
and they are rich in nitrogen and phosphorus.
So in other words,
farmers are applying fertilizer
that is not suited for oil palm.
And that's because the fertilizer program promotes
the use of the wrong fertilizer for oil palm.
So as you can see here,
there's a clear opportunity
to fine tune this fertilizer program
to make sure that farmers will have access
to the right type of fertilizer.
I need to speed up here because I'm running out of time.
But this narrative nutrient balance is consisted
with our visual observations in the field.
We have found all type of nutrient deficiencies,
we have run nutrient tests
and in our cases we have found that
for example near 100% of the fields
are deficient for potassium
and near two thirds of the fields
are deficient for nitrogen and for magnesium.
And we are now conducting a on-farm trials
where we are trying to help farmers
to increase their productivity.
We are doing that in a step,
in a stepwise fashion
where we are first trying to increase productivity
by application of practices
that don't involve higher costs.
Like for example, improving the way farmers are harvesting
and one farmers increase their productivity by harvesting,
then we suggest them to implement.
our practices are more costly,
for example use of fertilizer.
And eventually we hope that by following this pathway
farmers we'll be able
to increase their productivity and their profit,
which is very important as we are talking
about the smallholder farms.
I'm gonna show you now the recite from the first year.
This plot here shows the cumulative FFB yield
since they start of the BMP plots.
The red line corresponds to our BMP plots,
the REF corresponds to the farmer managed plot.
And you can see that over the course of one year,
the productivity of the BMP plots
is about two ton hectares,
two times higher compared with the reference plot.
And this was actually surprising
because going back to a time lag
that I was explaining before about
yield formation in oil palm,
the time it will take longer
until we see the effect of fertilizer.
So this is just the beginning
of the positive impact of BMPs on yield.
We will expect this yield benefit to increase
as the oil palm it starts to capture
the effect of the fertilizer application.
But bottom line is that,
it seems that there are a lot of opportunities
to increase oil palm production in Indonesia
by closing the yield gaps.
The farmers are operating way below
relative number of yield,
there is evidence of very severe
nutrient deficiencies and imbalances
and the current fertilizer subsidy Parameters
should be fine tuned to better address
the needs of the smallholders.
We are working with ministries in Indonesia
to try to tune the current fertilizer program
and clearly better agronomy is needed
but it also needs more vigorous succession plans
that can help us to address those knowledge gaps.
A bottom line in trying to answer
to the title of this seminar,
it seems to us that intensification especially
if complemented with appropriate policy and institutions
has the potential to help Indonesia
as well as other developing countries in the world
to reconcile their economic and the environmental goals.
Thank you very much
and I guess we can now open for questions.
-: Awesome, thanks Patricio.
That was a great seminar.
Mr. Patricio I'm just curious as to which,
what models are you using to predict the yield gap?
Patricio: All right,
we are using a Dutch model model called oil palm,
no sorry palm scene.
It's a model that has been available a few years ago.
It simulates the whole plantation cycle,
so we're talking about simulations that will simulate
from year zero until year 25.
And we have been,
and we have spent a lot of effort trying
to validate those models
and for doing so we have collected yield data
from experimental plots that were managed
to minimize nutrient deficiencies
and where people having going there
almost every day to collect every single fruit.
And we are quite comfortable with the model,
it's not perfect simulating yield
for perineal crops is challenging
but overall our simulated values are consistent
with what you will find
in very well-managed experimental plots in Indonesia.
-: Martha has a question.
Martha: Okay, thank you John.
Patricio thank you for a great seminar I appreciate it.
So, in your survey you showed that 66%
of the smallholder farmers can afford to buy fertilizer.
Is that correct?
So as a followup to that question
to the small holder farmers,
do they actually,
one thing is they are able to purchase it,
but do they actually purchase it?
If not where,
because where do they invest that money they have?
So that statement is a little bit confusing to me.
The survey shows that they are able to buy
but do they actually purchase fertilizers?
Is what I am asking.
Patricio: Yeah, yes, they purchase fertilizer
but as I showed before,
they will purchase then subsidized fertilizer
which is not the appropriate one for oil Pam nutrition.
So as you can see here,
as you can see there
there is a knowledge gap because even though
they will buy and they will apply the fertilizer,
they are applying a fertilizer that is no well Suited
for oil palm nutrition.
Which is kind of a huge opportunity cost for the country
because they call country is spending money
on subsidizing fertilizer for smallholders,
but then the fertilizer that gets subsidized
is not the one that they should be using.
And one of the reasons for that is that
most of the fertilizers brands comes from the 70s and 80s
and were developed for rice or for maze
not for oil palm and as I show my slide,
the nutrient requirements for oil palm
are very different from cereal crops.
Oil palm has comparably higher nitrogen
and potassium requirements compared with phosphorus.
But it's not the case of cereal crops such as rice.
Martha: Okay, so a followup question,
since oil Palm is important,
not just for Indonesia but as a export,
given what you showed us in the products at the beginning,
what is that,
What is the role of countries that purchase these Palm oil
in ensuring that there is a level
Indonesia can invest a subsidized fertilizer
but what's the role of people who purchase products
that does have Palm oil that would be you and I
and other countries?
Patricio: That's a very interesting question.
You know Martha, when I started working on oil palm
a colleague of mine told me "Patricio you're,
"you will feel that it's gonna,
"you will feel like swimming on hot water
"because you will get hit from right
"and from left."
So there is a role to play
from oil palm buyers in terms of asking Indonesia
to produce oil palm in a sustainable way.
The key thing there to understand is that
while we are asking Indonesia to protect forest
We also need to be sensitive
to their economic aspirations.
Indonesia is a developing country
and oil palm is a major source of income.
So for them producing more palm oil
has a potential to bring millions
of farmers out of the poverty.
And I guess in answer to your question
and also in relation to the picture
that is shown in this slide,
I think that we need a combination of both.
So in this picture, you can see Maryanne
who is the program officer from Norway
at one time that she came to visit
one of our experimental sites in Sumatra
and all the women surrounding Maryanne are oil Palm farmers.
And there was this conversation between Marianne
and the farmer who was very interested.
So on the one hand you have Maryanne
who climate change and an environmental background
and on another hand you have the farmer
who is producing oil palm.
And Maryanne asked the farmer,
"Why are you producing oil palm?"
And the farmers simply respond,
"Well thanks to oil palm I can send
"my second daughter to school."
So I think that it needs discussion
about what the role of oil palm buyers
in asking Indonesia to do certain things.
I think that we should all keep on mind
that it's very important to protect the environment.
We all want that,
but we need to do so in a way
in which we are also sensitive
to the economic goals of these countries
and the economic aspirations of these millions of farmers.
So that's my answer to your question.
Martha: Yeah, thank you I appreciate that.
-: Thanks, Martha.
Jim asked a question in there.
You want me to read it?
Patricio: Yeah, do you think you can read it for me?
Sorry John.
John: He says that,
Palm oil yield peaks at seven years
then gradually declines from then to about 25 years.
Given the short term experience of less than 12 years
what is the fraction of a given
two hectare farm in that context?
And how was that taken
into account in surveying the optimum harvest interval?
Patricio: Jim maybe you mean where I play for?
-: Yeah, I think in running your slides.
You showed that the timing
could be two to three times a month
was it that thing?
If you go to that slide you probably you,
where you're talking to him about it
and also about the experience of the producers
in growing palm (indistinct) less than 12 years right?
So I was just curious in the context
of your 25 year chart there
and producers having only 16 or less than 16 years
where were most of America fraction or they're farmers
of various phrases of those years in each of the districts?
Patricio: All right, all right I got you there.
So first of all, these farmers
manage only one field in general
and most of these farmers,
so basically the field that correspond here is one farmer
and in the palm age will be equivalent
to the experience of a farmer growing oil palm.
So for example,
if you look at this point here
this point a farmer who grow,
who has a total of five years of experience
of growing oil palm.
So this is the only field that this farmer has managed.
He planted oil too well
and he has been growing oil palm for only five years.
And that's the first time in his life
he grew oil palm.
-: Okay, so that,
so each point there,
each data point is representative of a farmer.
If I take the top most data point out there next
to the yield attainable,
that person would have a two acre field
that's no looks like eighth year or something like that?
Patricio: Yeah, right, right, right.
-: Okay, that makes more sense.
Patricio: So you can see that there are farmers
who have planted oil Palm only five years ago
for first time.
So they have very little experience
and other farmers have planted that plantation 22 years ago
and they have more plantation, more experience.
But in all cases this is the first generation
of oil palm farmers.
-: So if I look at that chart
just a quick followup here,
the ones that are five years have just planted
their two hectare fields.
Is that right?
Or, I mean, I have recently planted
within the last five years
as opposed to somebody way off to the right.
In fact, you got a point there on 25 years
it must've been around a long time.
So that's a pretty good spread coming
about for the entire data set, which is good.
Thanks for the presentation.
Patricio: Yeah it also helped me
to explain something else.
That's the importance of having this productivity curve here
because you can see that the potential changes with the age.
So when calculating the yield gap
we need to calculate the yield gap for each
considering the age of the plantation
because you cannot calculate the yield gap for this farmer
using the attainable yield in order to corresponds
to a plantation of 20 years.
-: So it is kind of interesting
almost like a boundary function there,
like you showed in Nebraska and corn and soybean yield
where you have a boundary function for efficiency.
Patricio: Yeah, the only difference is that in Nebraska,
most of the dots will be very close
to a boundary in this case.
-: Okay, good point.
John: We do have another question
from Eris, Aaron and Alison.
-: All right.
So how are botanists (Mumbles)?
How do you believe first world
countries will have to elevate this issue?
So I get that.
We have two, two questions here.
I think that I answered the second question already.
So I'm gonna try to answer the first one here.
So oil palm is originally from Africa.
It was first introduced
to Indonesia in the early 19th century.
And you have basically,
and oil palm loves the tropical environment.
And you basically have,
there's a planting material having a slide here.
You have basically the,
what plantations will plant is a hybrid
that come from a parent and is called Dura
in another parent that is pisifera.
So what you see on the plantations
are almost all F1 hybrids.
Now, in some cases the smallholders
will go to commercial plantations
and grab loose fruits and they will plant them
on their own fields.
And because they are planting the F1,
then they will get all sorts of things.
They will get 25 Dura, 25 Pisifera and 50% tenera.
And the pony is that when you grow the F1
then you will get 25% of the plants are Pisifera
which means that they don't produce anything.
And that's a major issue also explaining yield gaps
that I explained today,
but making sure that farmers use certified material,
planting material rather than going out there
to pick loose fruit from oil plantations
is also very important when it talking
about yield gaps in smallholder farms.
But in extend to your question,
oil palms come from Africa.
It was introduced to Indonesia
and what you see planted nowadays corresponds
to a cross between a Pisifera and Dura
which is called Tenera.
Yeah, in my own way something that is very interesting
about this hybrid is that when you compare the hybrid
versus the dura parent,
the FFB yield is not too different.
So the productivity is not too different
but what is different is the whole all concentration.
The hybrid produce around 25 per hectare
an oil extraction rate of around 25%
while Dura has 70%.
And so when a smallholders go
and they pick the fruits,
they have two problems.
First of all is that they're not gonna get any yield
from 25% of the F1 population.
And from the other 75%
and then they will get lower yield
from the other 25% of the population that is Dura.
So as you can see many problems going on there.
Bottom line is that Indonesia is making a big investment,
trying to promote that the smallholders
use certified planting material
but that takes time because we are thinking here,
we are talking here about a 25 year plantation cycle.
So even if you start now
to promote certified planting material
it's gonna take 25 years
until you have all the smallholders
to switch from the non-certified to a certified material.
-: Patricio is a fertilizer management regionally-based?
Does it exist in Indonesia?
You've got,
you had Sumatra and Kalimantan.
So how,
what is the current agronomic program
with respect to fertilizer management,
if it exists?
Patricio: Well for large plantations it's quite good.
So my answer is gonna now focus on a smallholders.
When you go to Java,
I mean to the Island of Jambi
and you visit with rice or maize farmers,
you can really tell that these farmers
know what they are doing
and they have access to extension services.
So they all understand pretty well
how much NPK they need to apply
and if they don't know something
they can always check with our local extension agent.
Now, when you look at oil palm in smallholders,
there is nothing like an extension service for them.
And one of the reasons is
because the Indonesian government
has not listed oil palm as a priority crop
thinking that somehow the private sector
the oil palm private sector
was gonna take care of the smallholders.
But in the real world that doesn't happen there.
The large plantations benefit from the smallholders
because the smallholders will sell their FFB
to their mills,
but that doesn't mean that the private sector
is gonna put together an extension service
to help address the needs of the smallholders.
So bottom line is that the smallholders oil palm farmers
are left there without access
to any reasonable extension services.
And I cannot tell you Martha
how many times I have talked with these farmers
and they have told me how they feel abandoned
and in many cases telling me,
"Hey, you know we chop 30 hectares of Frank forest,
"just because we know how to increase the productivity
"in our plantation."
So again it's not only about giving the farmers more input,
but also empower them with better knowledge.
Well it's about how to use those inputs.
And there is nothing like a local nutrient recommendation,
that doesn't exist.
-: Than you.
jam: And that's why I didn't have time
but we are doing a lot in terms of trying to change that.
And we are following two approaches.
One is bottom up, working with ministries,
with farmers agencies in emulsifying
the fertilizer subsidies and extension programs.
But we're also trying to promote
this farmer to farmer learning.
And we are developing all these technical flyers here,
this pocket guide,
we have had many filets
and you can tell how hungry these farmers are
for technical information.
So the opportunity is there
to put together an extension service that can help
to address the technical needs of these farmers.
-: Thank you, Patricio,
I appreciate it and very nice seminar.