Farmers encouraged to clean oil palm blocks for better harvest

By PETER ESILA
THE Oil Palm Industry Corporation (Opic) has encouraged smallholder farmers to clean their blocks to improve their harvest.
Opic general-secretary Kepson Pupita, over the weekend in Poppndetta, Northern, said last year smallholder farmers throughout the country made K40 million.
Pupita said Opic introduced a block rehabilitation programme to get youths to clean their blocks and get paid.
About 35 youths received their payments for cleaning their oil palm blocks.
“This programme gives the youths K500 per hectare, it is a message to motivate them to work in the blocks,” Pupita said.
“There is money in the blocks.”
Opic’s core objective is to develop and provide extension intervention that will enhance smallholder oil palm productivity and strengthen the economic, environmental and social wellbeing of the smallholder sector.
The block rehabilitation, under the price support and intervention programme, is the general upkeep of the oil palm blocks to increase crop yields and production.
Pupita said they expected industry earnings to improve by another K70 million to K80 million through the intervention programme which would include block rehabilitation and maintenance, staff changes, maintenance of houses, additional staffing and training of financial literacy for farmers.
Meanwhile, Pupita said the staff houses in the province would be renovated.
“Sorovi is one of the biggest divisions of the Oro oil palm project,” he said.
“We have 15 houses, out of the 13 housing facilities here.
“One is the administration building and the other is the warehouse.
“Of the 15, almost 80 per cent of the houses are rundown, these houses are almost 30 to 40 years old.
“The yield (here) is like 9-10 tonnes of fresh fruit harvested per hectare per year which is very poor.
“We should be averaging around between 20-25 tonnes, the milling company as I always say is doing 35-40 tonnes.” He said the reason why the best possible yields were not being achieved was because of staff morale, staff issues, fertiliser issues, replanting issues.
“These are issues that have been here for a while, these are legacy issues, it will take us time to fix,” he said.