2018 Volume 55 Issue 2 Pages 320-345
The Indonesian government encourages oil palm plantation development based on the Perusahaan Inti Rakyat (PIR) scheme to modernize swiddeners’ agricultural practices as well as to help develop the national economy. The purpose of this study is to clarify how swiddeners are accepting the oil palm plantation development in East Kalimantan. Swiddeners characterize oil palm plantation development separately as “Plantation development” and “Oil palm trees” and introduce the two of them differently based on their separate evaluations. Swiddeners recognize that plantation development has its positives, such as regular and high cash incomes, monetary compensation for the use of their lands, as well as fostering good social relationships with a villager hired by the company. However, it has negatives too, such as drastic changes to swidden-based livelihoods. Based on these multiple evaluations, swiddeners introduced plantation development in inaccessible and unproductive land but planted oil palm trees themselves in their fallow fields. Although they cannot currently obtain financial benefits from harvesting the fresh fruit bunches due to a lack of mills, they recognize the benefits of planting oil palms, such as creating a border for the swidden fields, obtaining edible shoots from the oil palm trees, and potential future cash income sources. Swiddeners recontextualized oil palm production from the modernized plantation system, fixed by the PIR scheme, to a swidden-based land-use system.
