Article 1 Indonesian farmers decry palm oil export ban as prices plummet Small-scale farmers say Jakarta's ban on palm oil exports has thrown their livelihoods into jeopardy. By Aisyah Llewellyn Published On 16 May 2022 Medan, Indonesia - Indonesia, the world's largest producer of palm oil, has struggled with rising prices and low stocks of cooking oil amid a surge in global prices of the raw ingredient. Citing the need to control the price spikes, which have been exacerbated by the Ukraine war, disappointing harvests and the COVID-19 pandemic, Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo announced in April a ban on exports of palm oil and palm oil products. But far from calming the domestic market, Indonesian farmers who spoke to Al Jazeera say the ban has caused prices of palm fruit to plummet and thrown their livelihoods into jeopardy. Below are the responses of six farmers who spoke about their experiences with the ban. Their remarks have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity. Mansuetus Darto, head of the Indonesian Oil Palm Farmers' Union, West Java: The effect of the export ban on small scale farmers has been enormous because many of them do not have other sources of income. So many farmers have struggled, especially in the last two years. They had hoped things were starting to improve after the pandemic, but if there are local or global political problems, it will affect them too. Everyone has struggled since 2020 when the pandemic started and now there is a new problem. The issue is that Jokowi was facing an in-country problem, especially in the run-up to the Eid al-Fitr holiday when the prices of foodstuffs usually rise every year. As cooking oil prices had been rising for months, he thought the best thing to do would be to enact the ban. But the export ban isn't going to act as a permanent solution to stabilise prices, and we immediately saw issues after the ban, like illegal exports happening because of corruption within the industry. The irony for farmers is that they now have to sell fresh fruit bunches at low prices and then buy cooking oil at high prices. We need more refineries in Indonesia and we need to stop the monopoly of the palm oil companies in Indonesia. Valens Andi, head of the Farmers' Hope Oil Palm Plantation Cooperative, West Kalimantan: It is getting more and more difficult for farmers with all these changes in the prices. Some feel as if 50 percent of their livelihood has been lost as the prices of the fresh fruit bunches have been slashed and, at the same time, the prices of fertiliser and pesticides have risen by more than 100 percent. Oil palm farmers use chemical fertilizer and the ingredients are imported from abroad and mixed here. We have been told by fertiliser suppliers that it is getting more and more difficult to get the raw ingredients, which is why the prices of chemical fertiliser have risen. We hope that prices of fresh fruit bunches will stabilise and be standardised in line with the minimum wage in each province. We need to make sure that everybody is getting a decent price. Yusro Fadly: Yusro Fadly says the price he receives for his crop has more than halved since the government banned exports of palm oil and palm oil products Yusro Fadly, farmer of two hectares of oil palm, Riau: "I used to sell my fruit for 3,900 rupiah ($0.27) per kilo but now the price has gone down to 1,800 rupiah ($0.12) per kilo if you sell to wholesalers. The official price set by the government for fresh fruit bunches is 2,947 rupiah ($0.20) per kilo." The factories buying the fresh fruit bunches have yet to set limits on how much they will buy, but there are long lines outside factories as farmers are worried that the prices will drop even further and want to sell their fruit as soon as possible. "We can't take care of our plantations properly any more as the price of fertilizer has risen by 300 percent and there has been no explanation from the government about why this has happened." It used to cost 300,000 rupiah ($20.51) for 50 kilograms of fertiliser but now it costs more than 1 million rupiah ($68). Where can you find a smallholder palm oil farmer who is going to be able to take care of their fields if the price of palm fruit is going down but the price of fertilizer is soaring?