Palm Oil Is Getting More Popular, People Are Reluctant to Plant Rice in Sarolangun?

The price of palm oil which has fluctuated in recent months does not seem to dampen the enthusiasm of oil palm farmers in farming.

Compared to planting rice, people prefer to plant oil palm because in terms of profit it is quite tempting.

So what happens when the price of palm oil drops? Some farmers have a fairly effective way to 'maintain' their condition, namely by not harvesting them during this time.

Another factor why palm oil is increasingly popular in Sarolangun district is that there is a fairly large target market.

Reporting from data from updating the directory of plantation companies and other agricultural companies (DPP and DUTL), the number of oil palm plantation companies in Sarolangun Regency that are still active in 2022 is 32 plantation companies.

In which, only three rubber companies while the other 29 are oil palm plantation companies.

So, people who own oil palm land are not worried about finding the market. Meanwhile, rice plants, which incidentally are the staple food of the community, do not seem to be much loved anymore, several factors are because planting rice is considered not profitable enough for some farmers.

According to one farmer in Singkut Sub-district, whose papaya plantations are now surrounded by oil palm and rubber plantations, some farmers who choose to change land functions because oil palm farming is 'not as hard as' rice farming.

Planting rice is considered complete enough that requires extra care starting from the stage of land preparation until the harvest period, not to mention if there are pests or other factors that cause crop failure.

According to him, some farmers who switch land functions also experience a pattern of following up with other farmers who change their plantation crops first. In the Publication of Harvest Area and Harvest Production in Jambi Production in 2021 it is explained that BPS has a way to estimate harvested area data, namely the KSA method through collaboration with the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) & the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) which is now merged into National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), Ministry of Agrarian and Spatial Planning/National Land Agency (Ministry of ATR/BPN), and Geospatial Information Agency (BIG).

The purpose of developing the ASF method is none other than to improve the methodology for calculating rice harvested area through the application of objective measurement by utilizing advances in information and communication technology, as well as the availability of high-resolution satellite images.

Thus, the data collected becomes more accurate and timely. Field observations KSA surveys are conducted on the last 7 (seven) days of each month.

In its implementation, Sarolangun Regency has 36 rice segments spread throughout Sarolangun Regency, each month these segments are observed by officers and then reported to the Regency.

From year to year, of course, there are many changes in land use in several areas, one of which is Pelawan District.

The KSA Pelawan officer reported that there were several segments that had no longer been planted with rice since 2 years ago, so they proposed changing the segment points to other potential areas, several cases of land use change that occurred of course related to the increasingly popular oil palm plantations. The rice harvested area in Sarolangun Regency in 2021 has decreased compared to the rice harvested area in 2020, reaching 35.35 percent (Publication of Harvest Area and Harvest Production in Jambi Production in 2021). This, of course, comes from many other external factors, not only the problem of land conversion, such as flooding in some of the observed areas and lands being left alone (not planted with anything).

Then, what if rice production in Sarolangun Regency decreases? What is the real impact felt by the community?

If the rice harvested area decreases, it certainly has a positive effect on rice production, then directly affects the rice production produced by rice farmers.

Reporting from the Plantation Service Data contained in the Sarolangun Regency Publication in Figures 2022, it is stated that the area of ​​oil palm plantations in 2020 will reach 85,147 hectares (temporary figure) and then in 2021 it will increase to 95,987.84 hectares.

The sub-district that is experiencing a very rapid expansion of oil palm plantations is Pauh, where in 2020 the area of ​​​​oil palm plantations is only 10,411 Ha (temporary figures) until 2021 the area has increased rapidly to 23,033.77 Ha.

From these data, it can be concluded that overall, within one year oil palm plantations in Sarolangun Regency increased by around 10,000 hectares with community ownership and plantation companies.

There are pros and cons of the phenomenon of the conversion of rice farming land into oil palm plantations.

On the one hand, the lack of paddy fields causes the fulfillment of community rice for their own consumption to be limited, if in the past people did not need to buy rice for daily meals, but this time they have to start taking into account buying rice for survival.

But on the other hand, the benefits of selling oil palm fruit are no joke, if the price is rising, the farmers can get much bigger profits compared to rice fields in the fields.

Another advantage of cultivating oil palm plantations is that the farmers' time is very flexible, they can do other work while waiting for the harvest time which is quite long.

In fact, cultivating oil palm is also widely used as a side business by several levels of society.

Local governments certainly do not remain silent, they continue to strive to re-print new rice fields in potential areas with large areas of land ready to be planted with rice again, also provide support and information related to rice farming to farmers so that rice fulfillment is fulfilled. (Jambi data/)