Jakarta Globe printed newspaper
by Samantha
Norsianus, 36, is a farmer, but he struggles to feed his family. Like many of his neighbors in Sanggau, West Kalimantan, this father of two used to grow food on his own plot of land, but today he works on a palm oil plantation owned by a foreign company.
“We don’t have our own land now,” he told the Jakarta Globe.
For three centuries, indigenous Dayak people like Norsianus lived as rice farmers in Sanggau. But about 15 years ago they lost their land to palm oil companies, and with it their ability to make a decent living.
“It is as if we were ghosts,” a farmer told Sawit Watch, a palm oil industry watchdog, in 2006. “We have been so pieced … by the spines of the oil palm that we are almost dead, left haunting what was once our own land.”
The Dayak’s story — and that of small farmers from five developing countries — is detailed in a report released last week by Oxfam, an international aid organization, about land grabs in Uganda, Guatemala, Honduras, South Sudan and Indonesia.
“The blinkered scramble for land by investors is ignoring the people who live on the land and rely on it to survive,” Oxfam chief executive Dame Barbara Stocking told the Associated Press.
Land for Palm Oil
In the past decade, as much as 560 million acres — roughly the size of Western Europe — has been sold or leased in developing countries. In Southeast Asia, land grabs often establish plantations for palm oil, an edible oil found in many hygiene products and packaged foods.
Indonesia produces more palm oil than any other country — this year it expects 23 million tons — and unresolved land grab conflicts plague small farmers here.
The Oxfam report describes a conflict between Dayak communities in Sanggau and Mitra Austral Sejahtera (MAS), a palm oil company that has run plantations in the region for more than a decade.
MAS acquired the plantations in the late 1990s from an Indonesian company, Ponti Makmur Sejahtera (PMS), which negotiated a land deal with the Dayak farmers a few years earlier.
The deal was characterized by false promises and a lack of transparency, according to the Oxfam report and Sawit Watch, which has studied Sanggau since 2002.
The controversy began when PMS went to Sanggau and asked each family to give up 7.5 hectares for palm oil production — 5.5 hectares for company use, and two hectares for their own. In return, the company promised to build houses, schools, water facilities and roads.
The farmers believed they would regain control of their land after the lease period, so they agreed. But they were misled, said Norman Jiwan of Sawit Watch, who leads the Sanggau case.
Lost in Legalese
In keeping with the 2004 Law on Plantations, the state — not the farmers — will own the land after a 35-year lease period. At that point, the government can extend the lease for 60 more years without consulting the locals.
“The community members were never told the legal implications,” Norman told the Jakarta Globe. “Their land was taken without their consent.”
The issue lay in a difference between tribal and national law, and in the company’s failure to explain that difference to locals.
The Dayak people view their property as “customary land” to be governed by tribal regulations, said Oxfam’s Indonesian campaign manger, Roysepta Abimanyu. These tribal rules include a concept called derasah (land rent), which involves temporarily renting out land – the tenant provides compensation, but the original owners retain ownership and the right to reject the tenant.
For MAS, however, derasah payment implied an actual land purchase, transferring ownership from the locals to the company.
“[The company] did not explain that the land would not be returned to us,” said Norsianus, who works for another palm oil company that struck a similar land deal. “We understood only our [tribal regulations], and under this concept the land must be returned.”
In this instance of competing views, national law and the Suharto government worked in the company’s favor.
An agrarian law recognized customary land rights as early as 1960, but it was never enforced. Instead, it was practically frozen under Suharto’s New Order regime, said Roysepta. So when Dayak farmers signed the agreement, they lost their land to the state.
Recognition of customary land rights was reintroduced to the legal system in 2000.
In interviews with Sanggau farmers, Sawit Watch found that the communities did not understand the deal’s legal ramifications and only recently learned of the 60-year extension clause.
“MAS manipulated the people by just saying they would borrow the land,” Norman said. “The people believed they would get the land back soon, but now the realize they have lost it forever, and for nothing.”
MAS’s parent company, the Malaysian palm oil giant Sime Darby, did not respond to a request for comment. According to the Oxfam report, the company contends that MAS followed Indonesian law and provided appropriate compensation.
Broken Promises?
Sime Darby, which owns 80,000 hectares of palm oil plantation land, can also claim to have helped the region by building facilities and creating jobs, Roysepta said. But the communities say that most infrastructure promises never materialized.
“They did not contribute anything,” Norsianus said. “At the agreement, MAS promised to build schools, houses of worship and homes. I have the document. But none of that has come to life.”
Most families also received only 1.2 hectares instead of the full two hectares. “It’s not enough given the increasing price of basic needs,” said Norsianus, who said farmers earn Rp 150,000 to Rp 60,000 ($17 to $70) each month.
“Rice in Sanggau costs Rp 16,000 per 20 kilograms and a gas refill is Rp 250,000. We suffer a deficit,” he said.
Royspeta said that some families did not receive two hectares because they could not give MAS the full 7.5 hectares.
Sime Darby now has plans to acquire even more land in Sanggau, the Oxfam report said.
“If they go further with the expansion plan, the local people will have no land for their own culture and crops,” Norman said.
The local farmers are worried. In 2007, community members asked MAS to address their concerns but received no reply, so they blockaded plantation roads and demonstrated outside company offices.
Once arrested, protestors had little hope — the Law on Plantations strictly prohibited any action disturbing plantation businesses, with a maximum prison term of five years and a fine of up to Rp 5 billion.
“If you demonstrated to demand your rights without a permit from the company … the court will decide you are a criminal,” Norman said.
On Sept. 19, small farmers achieved a victory when the Constitutional Court dropped this part of the law, deeming it unconstitutional. “It’s a good first step,” Roysepta said.
But the fight isn’t over. Though national law has changed, it could take a while for individual districts to adjust their bylaws, he said, adding that locals and NGOs must work with oil palm companies to find a solution.
“We’re not saying this is right or this is wrong,” Roysepta said. “What we’re saying is, let’s do something about it.”
The situation is complicated, he said. Some farmers found opportunities with the company and gained new skills as others became marginalized.
“I don’t think the people reject oil palm in their own land,” Norman said. “They want investment and development, but they don’t want someone to take land from them or to extinguish their rights.”
Royspeta acknowledged that oil palm companies have tried to improve conditions for farmers. Sime Darby has a working relationship with Oxfam, and both are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, an international nonprofit body that develops environmentally and socially sustainable palm oil standards.
He said investors should rethink their approach.
“Invest in communities,” he said. “Put money on small-holder farmers who are often at the margins of the credit system. If you solve that, you will solve many cases of hunger in rural areas.”
The report is part of Oxfam’s GROW campaign to secure a future where everyone has enough to eat.
“When you invest money, don’t put it on the land,” Roysepta said. “Put it on the people.”
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