Palm Oil And Likely Futures

Key messages This brief examines two contrasting policy options: the implementation of zero deforestation commitments by the private sector and a complete moratorium on the expansion of large-scale oil palm plantations, and compares them to a situation without policy action.The zero deforestation commitments and the moratorium on large-scale oil palm plantations expansion could reduce cumulative deforestation by 25% and 28%, respectively, compared to a situation without policy action. They could also cut greenhouse gas emissions from land use and land-use change by 13% and 16%, respectively, over the period 2010-2030.Even under the zero-deforestation and moratorium scenarios, Indonesia is projected to increase palm oil production between 124%-97% over 2010-2030, which is partly due to higher production originating from smallholders.Both measures - the zero deforestation commitments and a moratorium of future large-scale oil palm plantations expansion - would be especially beneficial to limit future deforestation in Indonesia in a context in which global demand for palm oil is expected to keep increasing.Foresight tools can equip stakeholders and policy makers with data and information to allow for evidence-based policy making. This will permit planning for reducing deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions, and finding options acceptable to all stakeholders involved.

Key messages Several sustainability certification schemes have been developed for palm oil; however, the field impacts of these schemes remain highly uncertain. The Sustainable Palm Oil Production (SPOP) project, funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR), was aimed at consolidating and deepening the scientific basis of these schemes.SPOP field work undertaken in Indonesia and Cameroon highlighted the large variability in practices and impacts of oil palm systems. Our main results related to the uncovering of the multiplicity of growers and their trajectories, and identifying room for improvement and the need for recommendations adapted to the various grower contexts and strategies.The SPOP project made it explicit that visions of sustainability and global challenges vary greatly among growers and other stakeholders involved in the palm oil sector. These diverging conceptions are most likely to induce bottlenecks in the definition and implementation of good practices and should be accounted for in the refinement of sustainability criteria.Within the SPOP project, we investigated possible futures for oil palm using participatory prospective analyses and multi-agent-based modeling work. Our research work showed that capacity development and the organizational capacity of smallholders, fair partnerships and combined forms of governance are key drivers in ensuring the uptake of good practices and sustainable development at the landscape scale.

Oil palm plantations and smallholdings are expanding massively in Indonesia. Proponents highlight the potential for job creation and poverty alleviation, but scholars are more cautious, noting that social impacts of oil palm are not well understood. This report draws upon primary research in West Kalimantan to explore the gendered dynamics of oil palm among smallholders and plantation workers. It concludes that the social and economic benefits of oil palm are real, but restricted to particular social groups. Among smallholders in the research area, couples who were able to sustain diverse farming systems and add oil palm to their repertoire benefited more than transmigrants, who had to survive on limited incomes from a 2-ha plot.

This thesis contributes to the existing literature by presenting the substantive essays on the Malaysian CPO futures market. In the first essay, the market efficiency test for the long-run, short-run and relative efficiency is applied under both open-outcry and electronic trading systems in the Malaysian Derivatives Markets. The findings reveal that the Malaysian CPO futures market is efficient in the long-run but inefficient in the short-run for both trading systems. The relative efficiency ratio test suggests that the level of inefficiency is higher in the electronic trading system and tends to increase with time to maturity. The second essay examines price discovery by utilizing the cost-of-carry model with incorporating an endogenously convenience yield. This model also is able to detect the market characteristics whether in backwardation or contango. The main result shows that the futures price is the main contributor to the price discovery function in the Malaysian CPO market. Furthermore, the long-run backwardation is significantly exist in the CPO futures market. Another finding reveals the positive CPO convenience yields and its value increases with time to maturity. The third and final essay explores the long memory properties of futures-spot basis and interest cost on market efficiency. The empirical result shows that the CPO futures basis can be characterised by both long memory and structural breaks. Moreover, the interest cost also shows the evidence of the long memory component. These findings are not consistent with unbiasedness hypothesis and therefore, past prices can be used to predict the future spot price. A new finding reveals that the level of persistence in futures basis and interest cost, increases when time to maturity increases.

The book provides a broad synthesis of the major supply and demand drivers of the dramatic expansion of oil crops in the tropics; its economic, social, and environmental impacts; and the future outlook to 2050. It is a comprehensive review of the oil crop sector with a major focus on oil palm and soybeans, the two most dynamic crops in world agriculture in recent decades.