Smallholder farmers agency in the face of palm oil “negative campaign”

Abstract

It is well known that the palm oil industry in Indonesia faces many challenges. Despite having the Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) as the national effort to set standards on operating palm oil industry within the environmental ethics, Indonesia recently face the possibility of having its palm oil exports to the European Union (EU) banned in the following years. This is based on their argument that palm oil in Indonesia has created deforestation of rainforests, which they pledge to prevent based on their Resolution on Palm Oil and Deforestation of Rainforests. As a result, protests from different stakeholders in the sector have been flooding, including from the government, exporters, plantations, as well as smallholder farmers. This paper focuses on the political agency of smallholder farmers in advocating their interest against EU’s plan – which to many has been called as a “negative campaign” against palm oil. We define the term “political agency” as the capacity of smallholder farmers to participate in matters that concerns their well-being and have access to governance and policymaking. A key feature of smallholder’s political agency is their participation in the discussion of policy making through Rural Producers Organizations (RPOs) or farmers associations. We test whether previous claims on the unequal power between smallholders and large corporations hold when it comes to advocating their respective interests. Specific questions that are addressed in this paper are: (1) Do small holders advocate their concerns towards the negative campaign? Or are they “free riding”?; (2) If they independently advocate their interest, how?; (3) Does their advocacy lead to a clear response or solution from the government?; and lastly (4) How does their political agency affect their socio-economic welfare?