Changes in globalised agriculture raise critical questions as rapid agricultural development leads to widespread social and environmental transformation. With increased global demand for vegetable oils and biofuel, in Indonesia the area under oil palm has doubled over the last decade. This paper presents a case study of how micro-processes that are linked to wider dynamics shape oil palm related agrarian change in villages in Sumatra, Indonesia. It pursues related questions regarding the impact of agribusiness-driven agriculture, the fate of smallholders experiencing contemporary agrarian transition, and the impact of increased demand for vegetable oils and biofuels on agrarian structures in Sumatra. It argues that the paths of agrarian change are highly uneven and depend on how changing livelihood strategies are enabled or constrained by economic, social and political relations that vary over time and space. In contrast to simplifying narratives of inclusion/exclusion, it argues that outcomes depend on the terms under which smallholders engage with oil palm. Distinguishing between exogenous processes of agribusiness expansion and endogenous commodity market expansion, it finds each is associated with characteristic processes of change. It concludes that the way successive policy interventions have worked with the specific characteristics of oil palm have cumulatively shaped the space where agrarian change occurs in Sumatra.

/pdf/processes-of-inclusion-and-adverse-incorporation-oil-palm-42279dn1qz.pdf

Processes of inclusion and adverse incorporation: Oil palm and agrarian change in Sumatra, Indonesia

Despite a long history of confrontation between forest agencies and forest people, "indigenous" or "local" practices are increasingly considered as a viable alternative of forest management. This paper is a synthesis derived from various long-term research programs carried out by the authors in Southeast Asia and Africa on forests managed by farmers. These researches looked at local practices and underlying science, including their social, political, and symbolic dimensions. They also addressed evolutionary trends and driving forces, as well as potential and limits for forest conservation and development, mitigation of deforestation, biodiversity conservation, and poverty alleviation in a context of global environmental, political, and social change. We discuss how forest management by local communities, contrary to the unified models of professional forest management, exhibits a high historical and geographical diversity. The analysis we draw from the various examples we studied reveals several invariants, which allows proposing the unifying paradigm of "domestic forest." The first universal feature concerns the local managers themselves, who are, in their vast majority, farmers. Management practices range from local interventions in the forest ecosystem, to more intensive types of forest culture, and ultimately to permanent forest plantation. But in all cases, forest management is closely integrated with agriculture. The second universal feature concerns the conceptual continuity of planted forests with the natural forest, in matters of vegetation's structure and composition as well as economic traits and ecosystem services. The resulting forest is uneven-aged, composed of several strata, harboring a large diversity of species, and producing a wide range of products, with timber seldom being the dominant one. The term "domestic forest" aims at highlighting the close relationship the domestication process establishes between a specific human group, including its elementary units, the "domestic units," and the forest, transformed and managed to fulfill the needs of that group. The domestic forest paradigm calls for the integration into forest science of a new concept of land management in which production and conservation are compatible, and in which there is no choice to be made between people and nature. It does not aim at contesting the value of conventional forest science, but it proposes domestic forests as a new scientific domain, for the combined benefit of forest science and of forest people. It does not contest the value of conventional forest management models, but pushes towards more equitable relations between forest agencies and farmers managing forest resources on their own lands.

Research, part of a Special Feature on Do we need new management paradigms to achieve sustainability in tropical forests? Domestic Forests: A New Paradigm for Integrating Local Communities' Forestry into Tropical Forest Science

/pdf/towards-better-practice-in-smallholder-palm-oil-production-4mbwclyw9d.pdf

Towards better practice in smallholder palm oil production.

This contribution examines the intergenerational effects of oil palm expansion in Indonesia at two scales. First, I use a broad brush and selected examples from different parts of Indonesia to high...

Intergenerational displacement in Indonesia’s oil palm plantation zone

During the 1980s, Singapore's policy-makers perceived that the continued expansion of the Singapore economy required more spaces and workers beyond the 680-square-kilometre territorial limits of the city-state. While planning to extend these limits through further land reclamation, Singapore also began to foster economic cooperation with regional neighbours, most famously in the form of a so-called Growth Triangle incorporating proximate areas of Malaysia and Indonesia. The empirical focus of this article is on the tourist enclave developed on the Indonesian island of Bintan, a 45-minute ferry ride from Singapore. This enclave embodies complex re-territorializations. We specify how, despite a decade of re-fashioning zones of Bintan into quasi-enclaves and the literal and metaphorical cultivation of a tourist haven, other claims on these transfrontier zones resurfaced in the form of resistances and struggles over the terms of access to land and resources. It is argued that the trajectory of Bintan is symptomatic of wider transformations and epitomizes new configurations of sovereignty, urbanity and ‘gated globalism’.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2006.00647.x

Global City Frontiers: Singapore's Hinterland and the Contested Socio‐political Geographies of Bintan, Indonesia

: This paper examines the extent to which traditional techniques and practices remain current among a sub-set of Indonesian tree crop smallholders. Village-based studies of independent oil palm and rubber smallholders in Riau (Sumatra) indicate that bio-diverse ‘jungle rubber’ and multi-cropping techniques still exist, but primarily as components of farmers’ coping strategies under low commodity prices. A further strategy, seeking income from non-agrarian sources, notably ‘illegal’ logging and land sales to migrants, partially fits Rigg's ‘deagrarianisation’ thesis, though his suggestion that the farm household has become a mere ‘shell’ is not substantiated. The lack of full legalisation of tenure constrains full capitalist development but does not impede land sales. Land seizures during the Suharto period reduced belief in the efficacy of customary (adat) law, though adat has retained importance in dispute resolution and as a cultural framework. New structures of village governance following decentralisation have so far had minimal impact in either empowering villagers or dispossessing elites.

Tree crop smallholders, capitalism, and adat: Studies in Riau Province1, Indonesia

/pdf/can-indonesia-s-complex-agroforests-survive-globalisation-1v4iz2vwo0.pdf

Can Indonesia's complex agroforests survive globalisation and decentralisation?

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Tree crop smallholders, capitalism, and adat: Studies in Riau Province1, Indonesia

Can Indonesia's complex agroforests survive globalisation and decentralisation?