History

History

African Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis)

The oil palm is a tropical palm tree. There are two species of oil palm. The better known one originated in Guinea, Africa and was first illustrated by Nicholaas Jacquin in 1763, hence its name, Elaeis guineensis Jacq.
Oil palms were introduced to Java by the Dutch in 1848^[17] and to Malaysia (then the British colony of Malaya) in 1910 by Scotsman William Sime and English banker Henry Darby. The first plantations were mostly established and operated by British plantation owners, such as Sime Darby and Boustead. The large plantation companies remained listed in London until the Malaysian government engineered their "Malaysianisation" throughout the 1960s and 1970s.^[18]
Federal Land Development Authority (Felda) is the world's biggest oil palm planter with planted area close to 900,000 hectares in Malaysia and Indonesia. Felda was formed on July 1, 1956 when the Land Development Act came into force with the main aim of eradicating poverty. Settlers were each allocated 10 acres of land (about 4 hectares) planted either with oil palm or rubber, and given 20 years to pay off the debt for the land.^[19]
After Malaysia achieved independence in 1957, the government focused on value adding of rubber planting, boosting exports, and alleviating poverty through land schemes. In the 1960s and 1970s, the government encouraged planting of other crops, to cushion the economy when world prices of tin and rubber plunged. Rubber estates gave way to oil palm plantations. In 1961, Felda's first oil palm settlement opened, with 3.75 km² of land. As of 2000, 6855.2 km² (approximately 76%) of the land under Felda's programmes were devoted to oil palms.^[20] By 2008, Felda's resettlement broadened to 112,635 families and they work on 8533.13 km² of agriculture land throughout Malaysia. Oil palm planting took up 84% of Felda's plantation landbank.^[21]
In 2007, Golden Hope Berhad, Kumpulan Guthrie Berhad and Sime Darby merged to form Malaysia's biggest publicly traded oil palm company with landbank exceeding 633,000 hectares. Its plantations are spread across Malaysia and Indonesian islands of Sumatera, Kalimantan and Sulawesi. Oil palm planting is Sime Darby largest revenue generator. In 2009, about 70% of the conglomerate's profits comes from the harvest and sale of palm oil. As an integrated palm oil entity, Sime Darby produce specialty fats, oleochemicals and biodiesel for export.

[edit] Research

In the 1960s, research and development (R&D) in oil palm breeding began to expand after Malaysia's Department of Agriculture established an exchange program with West African economies and four private plantations formed the Oil Palm Genetics Laboratory.^[22] The government also established Kolej Serdang, which became the Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (UPM) in the 1970s to train agricultural and agro-industrial engineers and agro-business graduates to conduct research in the field.
In 1979, following strong lobbying from oil palm planters and support from the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) and UPM, the government set up the Palm Oil Research Institute of Malaysia (Porim).^[23] B.C. Sekhar was instrumental in Porim's recruitment and training of scientists to undertake R&D in oil palm tree breeding, palm oil nutrition and potential oleochemical use. Sekhar, as founder and chairman, strategised Porim to be a public-and-private-coordinated institution. As a result, Porim (renamed Malaysian Palm Oil Board in 2000) became Malaysia's top research entity with the highest technology commercialisation rate of 20% compared to 5% among local universities. While MPOB has gained international prominence, its relevance is dependent on it churning out breakthrough findings in the world's fast-changing oil crop genetics, dietary fat nutrition and process engineering landscape.