Collective action, replanting and resilience; Key lessons from 40 years of smallholder oil palm cultivation in the Ophir plantation, Indonesia

CONTEXT: Oil palm smallholders often have difficulty implementing good agricultural practices and replanting, and tend to obtain low yields compared to corporate plantations. A frequent strategy to improve the sustainability of smallholder production systems is sustainable intensification, aimed at increasing land productivity and farmers' incomes. To facilitate sustainable intensification, many leading public and private sustainability initiatives require farmers to join farmer organisations as a precondition for certification and assistance, with the objective of achieving advantages of scale. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this article is to analyse the resilience of farmer organisations in the Ophir plantation when faced with replanting. We do so by linking actors, situations, and contexts relevant to collective action in five farmer cooperatives in Ophir over a 40-year period. Our aim is to offer unique insights into the enduring dynamics that influence the resilience of farmer organisations, shed light on smallholder oil palm replanting strategies, and draw several key lessons from this case. METHODS: Our findings are based on field visits by the lead author before, during and after replanting. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected to enable a holistic overview. During visits, 110 interviews with relevant stakeholders were recorded, project reports were collected, as were data on yields, costs, and other information on the functioning of the farming system. Analysis of high-resolution satellite imagery of the Ophir plantation and plantation inspections allowed us to further quantify replanting methods and replanting progress. A combined IAD-SES-NAS framework was used to structure findings and link variables, key events and context. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that farmer organisations can facilitate sustainable intensification in smallholder systems, but the resilience of farmer organisations proved diverse during replanting. Thus, farmer organisations are by no means a silver bullet for sustainable intensification. Landscape conditions, palm tree age, smallholder diversity and financial (mis)management play crucial roles in the resilience of farmer organisations and replanting strategies. Significant investment in various types of collective action is needed to encourage sustainable intensification through farmer organisations. SIGNIFICANCE: This article reports a rare holistic analysis of the bio-physical, socio-economic, and institutional aspects impacting collective action and replating in smallholder oil palm plantations. We present significant empirical data, which allows us to link 40 years of interactions between farmers, their institutions, plantations and changing contexts. Thereby we provide unique insights into farmer organisations, collective action and smallholder oil palm replanting.