Agroforestry can improve biodiversity, sustainability of oil palm plantations — Expert

Oil palm plantations should adopt agroforestry as this approach will increase biodiversity and sustainability, said an expert.

French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (Cirad) Professor Alain Rival said agroforestry is the use of land that combines trees with crops or livestock or both.

He said that through this approach, oil palm plantation owners could select any forest tree species to be planted in between oil palms, as a space of 12 metres is enough for agroforestry. As an example, Rival cited Cirad’s Trails Projects, where the agroforestry approach was applied on 37 hectares of land in the Kinabatangan District in Sabah to combine oil palm with 15 different forest species.

“Any plantation can do it (agroforestry). You don’t need a huge area, and you can do that in five hectares. Instead of planting 143 palms per hectare, you plant only 90 (plus the other forest species) and then see the difference.

“It’s not even an experiment, it (the Trails Project) is just a demonstration plot to show that reducing the density doesn’t strongly impact the yields. From there, you can build up a different project because your distance between palms is 12 metres, so you have a lot of space,” he told Bernama in an interview at the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) International Palm Oil Congress and Exhibition 2023 (PIPOC 2023).

Rival said that within the 12metre space, the land owner could grow durians, mangosteen, pepper and vanilla, among others, as cash crops. He said smallholders, especially, can benefit from these additional cash crops.

“If the old palm prices are dropping, maybe the (prices of) vanilla or durians are still good. You don’t put all your eggs in the same basket; you diversify your production,” he said.

Increasing biodiversity, sustainability

Rival said in a presentation that adopting agroforestry could result in a more sustainable and viable environment for wildlife.

“The second aim (of the agroforestry), the long-term aim, is to have a continuity, to have a patchwork of landscapes, which mix the oil palm plus the agroforest, plus the forest itself, and the riparian area.

“The riparian areas are the areas along rivers, and they are biodiversity hotspots. We want to use them to create a network of biodiversity. But the (Trails) project is just testing the feasibility of having a co-planting, planting at the same time of forest species and oil palms,” he