R

egents across Indonesia are uniting under the Coconuts Producing Regional Governments Coalition (Kopek) to boost a coconut-based economy and to aim for more professional plantation management.

Gorontalo Regent Nelson Pomalingo, who is also Kopek’s chairman, told The Jakarta Post recently that the coalition had been formed in November last year with only 10 regencies, but it was looking forward to expand its membership.

As many as 248 out of 514 regencies in Indonesia produce coconuts, according to Kopek’s data.

“Coconut is an ancient commodity which is often forgotten and unlike palm oil, which is dominated by corporations, coconut is mostly managed by people,” he said in Jakarta.

Nelson added that coconut plantations were still managed unprofessionally by individual farmers who also owned them.

The professionally managed plantations, meanwhile, export most of their products, which in turn causes shortages at factories that are supposed to make added-value products of coconuts.

“In Gorontalo, we have five factories that are owned by domestic investors. Each factory needs 300,000 coconuts a day and they are facing a shortage of supply,” Nelson said.

He suggested that the Trade Ministry should set a coconut export quota to ensure that the raw commodities are allocated to domestic industries rather than exported.

The alliance expects to build a database of coconut plantation land in Indonesia this year, while working with the Agriculture Ministry’s Palma Plants Research Office in North Sulawesi to push for the certification of coconut seeds.

“The government regulation only allows certified seeds to be traded. We, as local governments, need to obtain new seeds for replanting, but we still cannot include uncertified seeds in our procurements,” Nelson said.

Almost half of the 2.8 million hectares of coconut plantations in Indonesia need replanting as the yields will decline after surpassing 50 years, even though the trees can still produce until they are 80 years old.

Nelson said the central government had been given a budget to replant 50,000 ha as of last year.

Another program, he added, was to improve plantation techniques as most were planted without additional fertilizers.

“Coconuts can be inter-cropped with crops such as rice and corn. The central government is giving fertilizer subsidies only for food crops, so we can utilize the fertilizer for coconuts by intercropping,” he said.

Central Sulawesi’s Buol Regent Amirudin Rauf, who is also Kopek’s secretary-general, said his regency wanted to boost the local economy by supporting farmer-owned coconut plantations. In the past, the regency had a negative experience with corporate-dominated palm oil plantations.

“We had a lot of land conflicts between local farmers and big palm oil plantations,” he added.

In 2012, Buol was the scene of a bribery case involving businesswoman Hartati Tjakra Murdaya and then-Buol regent Amran Batalipu. Hartati bribed Amran to obtain the right to cultivate land for her palm oil plantation business.

Amirudin said the Buol government passed a moratorium in 2013 on corporate-owned plantations from expanding their land and only allowed farmers to open new plantations.

“We have run agrarian reforms since then. We have 140,000 ha of uncultivated land. Certified 36,000 ha of uncultivated lands were given to locals who each received a hectare or two,” he said.

Mawardin Simpala, the executive director of advocacy NGO Friends of Coconut, said the massive expansion of palm oil plantations had caused traditional coconut farmers to lose their lands such as one case in Jambi where they had to move to Kalimantan.

He argued that boosting the coconut industry would have more impact on the local economy.