Our team has been supporting the communities since 2015 to address the challenges faced by independent small farmers by providing the necessary technical assistance, various training, capacity building, and learning exchange opportunities to increase the productivity and profitability of the local community towards reaching local and national standards such as MSPO and RSPO. Through the Good Management Practices (GMP) training, small farmers received direct training and support on best agricultural practices, improved farm management practices, health and safety as well as environmental and social impact management.

Besides narrowing the gaps between smallholder practices in RSPO standards and better oil palm yield through GMP, our team found that smallholders in Sabah face accumulated severe land tenure issues deserving significant attention, whereby lack of secure tenure and inability to solve land conflicts eventually leads to more problem for farmers and the environment. Non-legality and insecurity of land tenure are also not acceptable under MSPO and RSPO standards. Therefore, our team is keen to explore various trial community pilot projects and bridge government bodies to come up with a trial solution to one of many complexities of land issues, namely those who have planted oil palm in Forest Reserve, Riparian Reserve, with Land Application (LA) status, and etc on land they consider customarily theirs.

The goal is for Sabah to produce palm oil that will be compliant with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) standards by 2021.

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PRIORITY ACTIVITIES IN THE WORK:

• Provide training to that focuses on improving smallholder’s livelihood and sustainable farming practices
• MSPO and RSPO Certification
• Community organising
• Stakeholder engagement

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