Indonesia

Singapore yesterday sought “strong, firm, effective” action against Singaporean companies that may be involved in illegal burning in Indonesia that led to the city-state’s worst pollution on record.

Sinochem and ZTE Energy, an agribusiness arm of the Shenzhen-based telecoms manufacturer, both bid for 150,000 hectares of palm-oil plantations in 2012, but were promptly rejected.

Government of Philippines offers Indonesian state-owned plantations company BUMN to develop palm oil plantations in Mindanao on an area of 120,000 ha.

Multinational companies have been encouraged to seize and deforest land owned by indigenous people, say human rights groups

Hong Kong-based First Pacific Co. Ltd’s agribusiness unit PT Indofood is eyeing 30,000 hectares of land in Davao Oriental, Philippines, for palm oil production.

Ce numéro spécial des Cahiers Agricultures analyse la place accordée au foncier et aux diverses formes d’agriculture dans les stratégies des Etats, des investisseurs et des communautés d’acteurs locaux.

Suitable land for palm-oil cultivation is running out in top producers Malaysia and Indonesia, which now account for about 85 percent of the global output. Wilmar is among several companies searching for land in West and Central Africa.

Video on the struggles of the Malind of Papua to defend their lands from the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate.

“We are aggressively looking for new areas in Sulawesi, Central Kalimantan and South Sumatra that are environmentally safe to expand our oil-palm footprint,” says president-director of the company’s oil-palm plantations in Sumatra.

People in Indonesia consider the food crisis as an excuse, deliberately created so that corporations could assert control over the necessary business which is central to most people’s lives.

Wilmar International has taken a majority stake in a palm plantation venture in Indonesia’s Papua owned by Noble Group, giving the world’s biggest palm oil supplier a toehold in the province where it also hopes to grow sugar cane.

"Nigeria has offered land for us, no matter how large we need," says Indonesian Industry Minister MS Hidayat