Last month the United States government and farm producers urged the postponement of the enforcement of the European Union Deforestation-free Regulation (EUDR), which is scheduled for implementation on Dec. 31. If the EUDR comes into force as planned, palm oil exports to the EU market will encounter severe restrictions.

A research-based report by the Oil Crops Taskforce of the Switzerland-based International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in May shattered the myth that oil crops such as oil palm are inherently bad. Instead “it is the farm practices that count. It is how the crops are grown, processed and traded. It's the practices, not the plants, that make the difference”.

A study conducted by the University of Maryland's Department of Geographical Sciences on deforestation trends in Indonesia between 1991 and 2020 concluded, among other things, that Indonesia contained vast areas of land (about 8 million hectares) deforested before 2020 which were underutilized.

"Indonesia is one of the few tropical forest countries that has been able to successfully slow deforestation. And with so much idle land currently available, Indonesia could stop clearing forests altogether while still increasing palm oil production,’’ Phys.org news quoted part of the study’s findings in a report early this month.

But the report also conveys a stern warning to the Indonesian government to maintain high sustainability standards in harnessing the land resources.      

This report is really quite encouraging for the new government, which plans to double Indonesian palm oil production to over 100 million tonnes, to meet the steadily increasing national and global demand for food and numerous other consumer goods and biofuel.