Standar Berkeadilan untuk Buruh Sawit

BURUH di perkebunan sawit ibarat tiang utama penyangga keberlanjutan proses industrialisasi komoditi unggulan Indonesia ini. Tetapi, dalam rantai industri ini, buruh adalah pihak yang paling tidak mendapat tempat, baik di level domestik, maupun di level para pemangku lintas negara. Satu setengah juta jiwa buruh di kebun skala besar milik swasta dan pemerintah di Indonesia, tidak jelas hak-hak normatifnya.
 

Perempuan dan tandan sawit(fhoto:king)

Butuh Perlakuan Khusus
Perkebunan sawit berada puluhan kilometer dari jangkauan akses-akses publik. Kekhususan karakter pekerjaan di perkebunan sawit, seperti pekerjaan berisiko tinggi, jauh dari pemantauan publik, sulitnya akses informasi, pendidikan, dan kesehatan ke pedalaman-pedalaman dimana perkebunan perkebunan menempatkan pekerjanya, membuat perlunya sistem khusus yang menjamin buruh memperoleh hak hak dasarnya.

Belum ada pihak yang peduli dengan kebutuhan khusus yang dibutuhkan oleh buruh perkebunan ini. Di level nasional, belum ada pembicaraan publik, apalagi kebijakan khusus untuk mengakomodasi kepentingan khusus buruh perkebunan ini. Institusi inisiatif swasta semacam BKS-PPS (Badan Kerjasama Perusahaan Perkebunan Sumatera), juga belum berkeadilan dalam menetapkan upah, yang di beberapa kabupaten, justru lebih rendah dari upah yang ditetapkan pemerintah.

Sementara inisiatif di level multi pihak lintas negara semacam RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil), tidak ada arah pembicaraan mengenai buruh perkebunan sawit, hingga pertemuannya yang ke 9, yang telah berakhir kemarin, November 2011, di Sabah Malaysia. Sangat disayangkan, pertemuan multipihak yang mengaku mempertemukan semua stakeholder sawit ini, justru melupakan buruh, tiang utama dari rantai industri itu sendiri.

Praktek Perburuhan
Akhir bulan  November 2011 diramaikan dengan berita  di berbagai media tentang praktek buruh anak di perkebunan sawit skala besar di Indonesia. Berita ini berawal dari publikasi hasil riset beberapa lembaga non pemerintah di Indonesia, seperti Kelompok Pelita Sejahtera, Lentera Rakyat dan Sawit Watch, yang menunjukkan berbagai temuan miris tentang sistem perburuhan di perkebunan sawit. Utamanya, temuan itu menyampaikan bahwa ada upaya sistematis pengaburan status buruh, yang berdampak buruh perkebunan tidak punya daya tawar dalam mengakses hak-hak normatifnya sebagai buruh.

Pernyataan GAPKI (Jakarta Post, 26 November 2011), bahwa secara legal tidak ada buruh anak di perkebunan sawit, tidak keliru sama sekali. Penelitian yang berjudul "Berjuta-juta dari Kebon Sawit" itu juga tidak menyebutkan ada legalitas buruh anak di perkebunan sawit. Bahkan, penelitian yang sama menyebutkan, bukan hanya anak-anak dan perempuan, tetapi buruh harian lepas, hingga karyawan tetap yang dikenal sebagai SKU, ditemukan tidak memiliki administrasi yang jelas-legalitasnya- di perkebunan PSB. Oleh karena itu, akar persoalannya adalah ketidak-jelasan hubungan kerja yang diciptakan sedemikian rupa, sehingga buruh tidak bisa mengakses haknya.

Jika Anda menanyakan kepada seorang karyawan tetap, apa yang membuktikan Anda sebagai karyawan tetap di perkebunan ini? Dia akan bingung, karena tidak memiliki bukti apa-apa, kecuali slip gaji setiap bulan. Tetapi, faktual, dia bekerja sehari-hari di perkebunan, dan disebut sebagai karyawan tetap. Selain itu, orang-orang sekitarnya, termasuk mandor, menyebut dia-tentunya dengan lisan-bahwa dia seorang karyawan tetap.

Akhirnya, bargaining posisi buruh menjadi sangat lemah. Sedikit protes, bisa berbuah dimutasi, atau bahkan di PHK. Seperti yang terjadi kepada 8 orang karyawan tetap PTPN III di Kebun Marbo Selatan, Labuhanbatu, pada bulan Februari-Maret 2011 yang lalu. Perjanjian kerja antara buruh dan pengusaha merupakan sebuah pra-syarat utama bagi seorang buruh untuk bisa mengakses haknya.

Sekali lagi, persoalannya, adalah soal apa yang yang dimaksud dengan buruh atau pekerja. Jika yang dimaksud dengan buruh adalah orang orang yang terdaftar di perkebunan sawit , pernyataan GAPKI di atas benar. Tetapi jika buruh adalah orang orang yang bekerja (faktual) setiap hari kerja di perkebunan sawit, baik tercatat maupun tidak tercatat, maka GAPKI keliru. 

Buruh atau pekerja menurut Undang Undang (UU) Ketenagakerjaan No 13 tahun 2003, pasal 1 ayat 3, dinyatakan bahwa buruh adalah setiap orang yang bekerja dengan menerima upah atau imbalan dalam bentuk lain. Jumlah buruh di perkebunan BUMN dan swasta skala besar, atau dalam riset itu disebut sebagai PSB, sulit didapatkan secara persis. Jumlah pekerja di perkebunan BUMN atau PTPN lebih banyak dari jumlah pekerja di perkebunan swasta.

Dari segi luas, di perkebunan skala besar, satu estate ( di beberapa tempat di sebut "divisi") terdiri dari 600 hektar hingga 1.000 hektar, dengan pekerja SKU dan BHL sebanyak 250 hingga 300 orang, belum termasuk kernet. Jika luas perkebunan PSB (PTPN dan Swasta) secara nasional seluas 4 juta hektar, maka dapat diperkirakan jumlah pekerja SKU dan BHL adalah sebanyak 1,2 juta orang, belum termasuk kernet. Setiap buruh, diperkirakan memiliki setidaknya satu orang kernet, sehingga jumlah total jumlah minimal buruh di PSB adalah sebanyak 2,4 juta orang di seluruh Indonesia. 

Pekerja anak terdapat dalam klasifikasi BHL dan kernet yang tidak terdokumentasi di perkebunan PSB. Jika hanya 50% saja dari kernet terdiri dari anak-anak, maka jumlah buruh anak secara nasional minimal sebanyak 600.000 orang. Jika dihitung seluruh perkebunan sawit baik PSB maupun non korporasi dan petani, maka pekerja anak akan mencapai angka jutaan orang.

Buruh Tidak Dilibatkan
General Assembly ke sembilan RSPO Borneo yang berlangsung akhir November 2011 ini telah berakhir. Memprihatinkan, karena tidak ada pembicaraan mengenai nasib dan situasi buruh perkebunan sawit. Apalagi pelibatan mereka dalam membicarakan masa depan dan keberlanjutan industri ini secara global. Buruh selayaknya terlibat dalam membicarakan masa depan mereka sendiri, di organisasi RSPO yang mengklaim representasi stakeholder rantai industri sawit.

Pertemuan menghabiskan waktu membicarakan penyerapan minyak sawit bersertifikasi yang tidak maksimal di Eropah, serta melihat kemungkinan penjualan sawit bersertifikasi di Cina dan India, dua negara konsumen terbesar sawit di dunia. Industri sawit mengeluhkan, dari 1 juta ton sawit bersertifikasi, ternyata Eropah hanya mampu menyerap setengahnya dengan harga premium. Sisanya, tetap dengan harga normal.

Pasca rampungnya pembicaraan mengenai pemilik sawit skala kecil-non korporasi, seyogyanya pembicaraan mengarah pada pelibatan buruh, sebagai aktor dan tiang penyangga keberlangsungan industri sawit. RSPO telah merampungkan capaian penting mengenai petani skala kecil, seperti proses sertifikasi gratis.

Publik menunggu adanya arah baru wacana dan kebijakan kepada buruh perkebunan sawit, baik di level domestik, maupun internasional. Para pengambil keputusan penting memulai gagasan untuk dibangunnya sebuah guideline, kerangka kerja tentang standar-standar buruh yang ideal dan berkeadilan di perkebunan sawit. (Saurlin Siagian)

Penulis adalah peneliti, Sekretaris Lembaga Penelitian, Universitas Darma Agung, tinggal di Medan. Penulis dapat dihubungi via saurlin@gmail.com 
source:  http://www.medanbisnisdaily.com/news/read/2011/12/24/73148/standar_berkeadilan_untuk_buruh_sawit/#.TxTbCIEa5Ak

North Sumatra plantations hiring children

N. Sumatra plantations hiring children: NGOs

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan | Fri, 11/25/2011 9:10 AM

A | A | A |

Many large-scale oil palm plantations in North Sumatra are employing child labor, according to several NGOs.

The NGOs — Pelita Sejahtera, Lentera Rakyat and Sawit Watch — issued a report that said 115,000 children were employed by the plantations.

The children, according to researcher Saurlin Siagian of Lentera Rakyat, accounted for 50 percent of the total number of people working on plantations in North Sumatra.

“The kids are mostly below 16 and have dropped out of school. Only a few of them are still going to school,” Siagian told journalists when presenting the report in Medan, North Sumatra, on Thursday.

Siagian said the children were mostly casual day laborers or as field helpers tasked with collecting oil palm fruit bunches.

The children were underpaid, Saigan said. Their wages depended on the amount of work they could finish in a day.

Children employed as casual laborers might make between Rp 300,000 (US$33) and Rp 500,000 every two weeks, while those employed as helpers earned from Rp 5,000 to Rp 10,000 a day.

“The wages they receive are not comparable to the risks of the work that they are doing in the field, especially because they are not equipped with protection equipment,” he said.

Quoting the Manpower Law and the principles of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), Siagian said that the employment of child laborers on oil palm plantations violated the law and the RSPO principles.

Exploiting child laborers was subject to sanctions that might be given in the form of certificate revocations and expulsion from the RSPO.

“Ironically, such sanctions have never been imposed on oil palm companies that were found to have been employing child laborers,” he said.

Siagian also said that the NGOs wanted to establish a working group on labor issues to develop guidelines on a just labor system for oil palm plantations.

Contacted separately, the secretary of the North Sumatra branch of the Oil Palm Employers Association (GAPKI), Timbas Prasad Ginting, said children were not employed by local GAPKI planations, as the practice was illegal.

“We ban oil palm companies from employing child laborers. They will be sanctioned if they violate so,” Ginting told The Jakarta Post on Thursay.

Ginting, however, said that some smaller, individually owned plantations might employ children.

“Suppose it is true that the kids are employed by individual employers. It still needs to be further proven, because what happens may be is that the kids were brought along by their fathers, who are working for that particular individual employer,” Ginting said.

PTPN 2 Sewa 700 Preman Obrak-abrik Lahan Adat

Masyarakat menolak eksekusi tanah oleh pihak PTPN 2.Ist

 

PTPN 2 Sewa 700 Preman Obrak-abrik Lahan Adat

Medan-ORBIT:  PTPN 2 kembali berulah. Dengan menyewa preman diduga dalam pengaruh alkohol, lahan pangan milik masyarakat adat Kampung Batu Gajah Kabupaten Langkat, rata dengan tanah. Tindakan brutal itu dilapor ke Poldasu.

Ketua Umum Badan Perjuangan Rakyat Penunggu Indonesia (BPRPI) Sumut Haroen Nuh kepada Harian Orbit, Selasa (4/10), mengungkapkan kekhawatiran masyarakat adat tentang tindak pidana akhirnya terjadi.

Dikatakan, PTPN 2 diduga menyewa preman dalam pengaruh alkohol mengobrak-abrik lahan pangan milik masyarakat adat. Akibatnya, lahan karet, tanaman pangan dan pemukiman masyarakat adat hancur dan rata dengan tanah.

 

Preman Mabuk

“Petugas penggusuran yang diduga dalam pengaruh alkohol mengobrak-abrik lahan pangan itu. Petugas kepolisian hanya diam,” ungkap Haroen.

Disinggung mengenai adanya perlawanan, Haroen menandaskan jumlah masyarakat yang minim dan lokasi terpencil membuat masyarakat adat tak berdaya membela hak-haknya. Apalagi, jumlah petugas yang menggusur mencapai  700 orang lebih.

Menurut Haroen, tindakan brutal PTPN 2 itu dianggap telah mengangkangi beberapa instansi. Di antaranya Plt Gubsu Gatot Pujo Nugroho yang saat ini telah membentuk tim penyelesaian tanah.

“Pemprovsu telah membentuk tim peneyelesaian tanah. Tindakan brutal PTPN 2 itu jelas telah mengangkangi kebijakan Gatot yang saat ini sedang berupaya menyelesaikan masalah pertanahan tanpa ada konflik yang berkepanjangan,” ujar Haroen.

Begitu juga dengan keputusan Mahkamah Agung (MA). Dimana dalam hal lahan pangan itu, PTPN 2 pernah digugat masyarakat adat (BPRPI) ke MA. Dalam gugatan itu, MA memenangkan masyarakat.

 

Tuntut Penegak Hukum

“Dengan penggusuran itu, PTPN 2 juga telah mengangkangi putusan MA dan melanggar hukum. Kita mengecam tindakan itu,” tegas Haroen.

Untuk itu, BPRPI tengah dalam rumusan untuk segera melaporkan tindak kriminal itu ke Kepolisian Daerah Sumatera Utara (Poldasu). BPRPI Sumut juga tengah merancang strategi untuk melakukan aksi massa menuntut penegakan hukum.

BPRPI juga meminta kepada pemerintah pusat untuk tegas membubarkan PTPN 2. “PTPN2 tidak pernah menguntungkan negara, karyawan dan para pekerjanya. PTPN 2 hanya lumbung duit bagi petinggi PTPN 2 beserta kroni-kroni yang diduga sebagai mafia tanah,” tukasnya. Om-12.

http://harianorbit.com/?p=8287

Richard Pieris to invest US$ 80m palm oil plantation in Indonesia

Richard Pieris to invest US$ 80m palm oil plantation in Indonesia
Wednesday, 6 July 2011 - 10:23 PM SL Time


Diversified blue chip Richard Pieris and Company will shortly invest US$ 80 million on a 16,000 hectare palm oil plantation in Indonesia.

We are in the process of serious negotiations to take over 16,500 hectares of land in Indonesia, Richard Pieris Group Chairman Dr. Sena Yaddehige told Daily News Business.

He said the company was in an advanced stage of negotiations because the initial commitment to the land is around US$15 million and that he was trying to risk manage this investment which will be invested by the Group. The company will be getting effectively only 11,000 acres and the remainder will go in for land settlements, he said.

Richard Pieris has always been in plantations and palm oil has been an industry which we have always been passionate about. We have even over 2,500 hectares of palm oil plantations in Sri Lanka. We will add a further 1,000 hectares to this, he said.

We would like to increase it further but Sri Lanka does not have that volume of land.

He said that had the land been available in Sri Lanka, he would have opted to have the palm oil plantation expanded in Sri Lanka. I would love to do another 5000 hectares of palm oil in Sri Lanka. I have also been offered another 65,000 hectares of land for palm oil cultivation in another country, he said. He was tightlipped with the destination of investment.

I have a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the 65,000 hectares but initial work will be the Indonesian operation, he said.

The principal aim of this palm oil plantation would be for export as palm oil is a unique dual use product. It can be converted into bio-diesel profitably with the price going upto US$80 per barrel and the market is extremely good with the number of mouths to be fed arising daily especially in India and China. After all this is the poor man`s ghee while it is also an important food product, he said.

It is going to be really hard work with a US$700 million investment for the 100,000 hectares plantation and it is bound to take around 10 years. But that investment does not have to go in full time cash for a start. The project will start generating funds for reinvestment for the third year onwards and we will be doing 100,000 hectares annually for ten years, he said.

He also said that his dream was to make Richard Pieris, a billion dollar company but that would be a long term vision over the next five to ten year period. We are at US$ 300 million now and the next target will be to make Richard Pieris a US$ 500 million group within the next two years, he said.

The targeted US $ 1 billion for the group will comprise US$ 500 million locally and the second US$ 500 million from overseas. I have an excellent team with me and I expect them to take the Group forward to reach these elusive targets, he said.

The New African Land Grab

by: Joan Baxter

Foreign investors, with the World Bank, are acquiring vast tracks of land in Africa - at the expense of local farmers.

The "town" chief of the village seemed to be in a state of shock.

Sitting on the front porch of his mud and thatch home in Pujehun District in southern Sierra Leone, he struggled to find words that could explain how he had signed away the land that sustained his family and his community.

He said he was coerced by his Paramount Chief, told that whether he agreed, or not, his land would still be taken and his small oil palm stand destroyed. He didn't know the name of the foreign investor nor did he know that it planned to lease up to 35,000 hectares of farmland in the area to establish massive oil palm and rubber plantations.

Haltingly, he said that without his land, he might as well take his leave of the village. By that he meant that he was as good as dead.

This is a ground-level view of a large land deal in Africa, where in recent years foreign investors have acquired tens of millions of hectares of farmland. In 2009 alone, the World Bank estimates that around the world foreign investors acquired about 56 million hectares of farmland - an area about the size of France - by long-term lease or by purchase. Farmland has become a favourite "new asset" class for private investors; "like gold, only better" according to Capital & Crisis.

The World Bank has its own term for the new global land rush. It calls it "agro-investment" and has developed seven voluntary principles to make the land deals "responsible".

Critics of the phenomenon - farmers' movements, human rights, civil society, women's and environmental organisations, and many scientists - call it "land grabbing". They say there is no way that the taking over vast areas of smallholder farmland and transforming it into giant industrial plantations and agribusiness operations can ever be "responsible".

They argue that land grabs are throwing millions of farming families and indigenous peoples off their land. They say that it's not just land that's being grabbed, but also precious water resources.

The investors are hedge funds, private equity funds (that are attracting even prestigious American universities with their promises of high returns), pension funds, banks, multinational corporations, and sovereign wealth funds seeking to sow capital and grow profits. They are also Middle Eastern and Asian nations anxious to secure their own future food security in the face of climate change, with dwindling water resources and arable land.

An estimated 70 per cent of the demand for farmland is in Africa, where land is cheap and traditional communal ownership makes people particularly vulnerable. Sometimes this can be done for the cost of a few gifts to traditional chiefs and grandiose promises of bringing "development".

Since 2009, in the wake of the food, fuel and financial crises of 2007-2008, the rush for farmland has only accelerated. But it's impossible to know just how much more of Africa's fertile land has now been taken by investors.

Corruption and profit

Recent in-depth research by the US-based Oakland Institute of land deals in seven African countries found that most of the land deals lack transparency, making it almost impossible to calculate their total area. Lack of transparency is a great enabler of corruption.

Yet "transparency, good governance, and a proper enabling environment" is one of the seven principles laid out by the World Bank for "responsible agro-investment". The Oakland Institute found that most of the land deals do not respect any of these principles.

This is ironic, to say the least.

More than any other institution or agency, the World Bank Group has been promoting direct foreign investment in Africa, and enabling the farmland rush. Its private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), with its Foreign Investment Advisory Service and its program to Remove Administrative Barriers to Investment, has been working - often behind the scenes - to ensure that African countries reform their land laws and fiscal regimes to make them attractive to foreign investors.

The World Bank Group has funded almost identical investment promotion agencies - "one-stop-shops" - in countries across the continent. It places people in strategic government ministries - even presidential offices - as private sector advisors.

The investment promotion agencies are developing and advertising a veritable smorgasbord of incentives not just to attract foreign investment in farmland but also to ensure maximum profits to investors. These include extremely generous tax holidays for 10 or even 30 years, zero per cent duty on imports, and easy access to very large tracts of land, sometimes over 100,000 hectares. Investors may pay just a couple of dollars per hectare per year for the land, and in Mali, sometimes no land rent at all.

The Sierra Leone Investment and Export Promotion Agency, boasts about the extremely low labour rates and flexible labour laws in the country and about other privileges it accords investors - 100 per cent foreign ownership in all sectors, full repatriation of profits, dividends and royalties, no limits on expatriate employees.

Such giveaways cast doubt on claims by African governments, and others trying to defend the land deals, that this kind of "agricultural investment" will solve unemployment, generate revenue for cash-strapped governments, reduce the dependence on aid, and bring economic development.

In this race to the bottom, African governments are also encouraged by the World Bank Group to outdo each other when it comes to protecting investors. Each year, it grades African on investor protection in its "Doing Business" report cards, praising countries that move up in the rankings in what an IFC official admits is a "horse race".

This means that low-income and food-deficit African countries, some still struggling to rebuild after long conflicts, such as Sierra Leone and Liberia, find themselves competing with each other to offer foreign investors ever sweeter deals on their arable land, so desperately needed for local food production.

The investment promotion agencies quote figures for the vast amounts of "uncultivated" or under-utilised" land in their countries, often without offering any recent land use studies to back up these figures or a thought for the millions of people who depend on that land for their livelihoods.

Nor do they take into consideration the crucial importance of small family farms, which employ more than half the people and produce 80 per cent of the food on the continent. Smallholder farms tend to be extremely biodiverse, involving fallow periods to protect and restore soils and water resources.

Not in Africa to help

Conspicuously absent in the talk about the purported benefits of the land deals is serious discussion of protection of local people, human and environmental health, water resources, biodiversity, human rights, food security, and free prior informed consent of the affected communities.

As the Oakland Institute research shows, many of the land deals are for enormous plantations of palm oil and sugarcane for agrofuels, or for the production of cut flowers and a handful of staple crops - all for export.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation has just released a "new paradigm" for agriculture, called "Save and Grow". Echoing other recent major studies, it finds that agro-ecological agriculture that emphasises conservation of soil and water resources and reduced use of agrochemicals can "enable low-income farm families in developing countries - some 2.5 billion people - to maximise yields and invest the savings in their health and education."

It states unequivocally that the industrial agricultural model of the Green Revolution, involving monocultures, high-yielding [commercial] crop varieties, heavy use of agrochemicals and mechanisation and irrigation, has "degraded fertile land and depleted groundwater, provoked pest upsurges, eroded biodiversity, and polluted air, soil and water."

And yet this unsustainable industrial agricultural model is the one being promoted by many African governments, donor agencies and foreign investors.

African farmers, left high and dry by their own governments during the decades of austerity programs imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, do need investment and support. They desperately need decent roads and access to local markets, processing equipment to add value to their own diverse farm produce, storage and drying facilities to prevent post-harvest losses, and basic amenities such as schools and health centres and water wells to improve rural lives, so that farming communities can thrive.

But foreign investors are not in business to provide any of these things. They are not in Africa to help impoverished African farmers improve their own farms, or to combat hunger. They are far more likely to destroy the family farm in Africa and aggravate hunger, all in the name of economies of scale, a global corporate food chain, and profits.

The same actors - the speculators, bankers, unregulated investors - who have had a hand in inflating food prices and bringing the global economy to its knees are now consolidating control of global food production and of land, to profit from the very crises they provoked.

It is beyond tragic that so many of them have set their sights on the new "asset class" of African farmland - which is the very asset on which hundreds of millions of Africans depend for their livelihoods and their survival.

Joan Baxter is a Senior Research Fellow with the Oakland Institute and author of its investigative reports on land deals in Sierra Leone and Mali. She is a journalist, award-winning author, and development researcher who has lived and worked in Africa for more than 25 years.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily represent Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
source:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/201162884240129515.html

Senate passes palm oil labelling bill

June 26, 2011 7:07 PM EDT

The Senate has passed an amendment to the Food Act requiring that products containing palm oil be explicitly labelled, rather than described as 'vegetable oil'.

The bill was passed by Coalition votes, and driven by Greens senator Rachael Siewert and Independent senator Nick Xenophon, both of whom have been vocal in their campaigns on the subject of palm oil. Most of the world's supply of palm oil, an extremely common ingredient in foods and food additives, is produced in Malaysia and Indonesia, where it is common practice to clearfell forest for plantations. Zoos Victoria reports that clearfelling results in the deaths of up to 50 orangutans per week.

The issue came to prominence last year, after a grisly ad from Greenpeace featured orangutan fingers in a Kit Kat wrapper. Senator Xenophon also emphasised the consumer health aspect of the labelling, saying that Australians consume 10kg of palm oil a year without knowing it, and that while other products labelled as 'vegetable oil' contain as little as 2% saturated fat, palm oil is 50% saturated fat. While the bill was rejected last week by a Senate committee, the alliance between the Opposition and the two senators was enough to pass the bill, which will likely pass in the House of Representatives if the Coalition-Greens alliance holds.

The Australian Food and Grocery Council decried the bill, saying the cost of changing a single label would be $10,000 to $19,000, and that food and grocery manufacturers were already under pressure from a 'perfect storm' of rising input costs.

"Food labels should be about ensuring consumers have important product information relating to health, nutrition and safety. From a health perspective, it's more important for consumers to know how much saturated fat is in a product rather than where the saturated fat is sourced," said a release from the AFGC.

Malaysia also expressed "grave concern", with the Malaysian Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Tan Sri Bernard Dompok describing the bill as "discriminatory". Dompok said the bill seeks to encourage "the use of certified sustainable palm oil in order to promote the protection of wildlife habitat".

"In this context, Malaysia is of the view that labeling palm oil purely from the perspective of sustainable production is discriminatory," he told BERNAMA, the Malaysian National News Agency. "In addition, competing vegetable oils are not required to be labeled."

"It is clearly evident that facts and figures provided to the Senate Community Affairs Legislative Committee have been clearly ignored," Dompok said.

"It is with great regret and disappointment that the Australian Senate has not accorded the due attention contributed by the oil palm industry in Malaysia and the sustainable practices adopted."
source:
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/169702/20110626/senate-passes-palm-oil-labelling-bill.htm

Do we have a plan B for energy?

(from the blogger:
this articles, as many other articles in this blog, not neccesarily represent the blogger point of view. as it purpose written at the blog title, this is also a storage for the relevant topics monitored from many media resources in internet.
thk, sp. siagian)


Are we dangerously dependent on Indonesia? Indonesia is India's top supplier of palm oil and coal - two forms of energy critical for our economic and individual growth. That is in itself not troublesome. But as Jakarta introduces new policies under pressure from environmental groups and local demand, can we ignore questions about future supply and its cost?

Take palm oil. Indonesia produces about 46% of global supply. Unpredictable weather keeps output volatile while new land is scarce. Last month, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono banned new plantations on 65 million hectares of peat land and primary forests. Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association says it would slow area expansion from an average of 350,000 hectares in the last four years to less than 200,000 hectares annually over the next two years.

It also triggers a tussle between Jakarta and regional governments which are allowed to explore and manage their own natural and land resources. Local governments have issued thousands of permits in mining and plantation business, the two sectors vital to increase revenues. As most allocations for palm oil plantations are in forests that cannot be used for farming, they could be revoked by this moratorium. Indonesian plantations are already under pressure from environmental groups for deforestation. Big corporate buyers such as Unilever and Nestle are demanding sustainability certification.

Currently, certified oil is a fraction of total sales but a mandatory scheme starts next year. Sustainable measures are expensive and plantations will pass on higher costs to consumers. That means people like us. At the same time, more and more palm oil is being produced by small and marginal farmers in no better condition than our own. By next year, 40% of whose yields are half that of plantations.

As their numbers grow, lower yields and inefficient scale will lift prices. More crucially, Indonesia's own demand for palm oil as food, biodiesel feedstock and industrial raw material is rising. It is world's fourth most populous nation and south-east Asia's largest economy. Affluent middle class accounts for approximately 70% of GDP. As in India, eventually the exportable surplus will dwindle, unless buoyed by faster increase in supply which is doubtful. Indonesia will never stop exporting palm oil because it fetches serious money.

A progressive export tax allows it to earn more revenue when palm oil prices rise. However, with imports expected to supply half the total consumption by 2020, India can't bank on Indonesia being always affordable or ample. Thermal coal burnt in power sta-tions faces similar risks. Indonesia is the world's and India's top supplier. Though only a fifth of our thermal coal consumption is imported today, volumes will spurt as electricity demand expands 56% in next six years. Indian companies are investing heavily in Indonesian mines for long-term supply. Yet, that is no guarantee. Already resource nationalism is raising its ugly head.
source:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/commodities/do-we-have-a-plan-b-for-energy/articleshow/8919252.cms