This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on March 25, 2024 - March 31, 2024

Come April 8, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) will celebrate its 20th anniversary as the multi-stakeholder initiative with the mission to transform the market and make sustainable palm oil the norm. Over the past two decades, tremendous progress has been made to advance sustainable production of palm oil. At present, about 20% of global production of palm oil is Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) that meets the stringent requirements of the RSPO standard.

Sustainable production is also supported by other voluntary and national certification schemes. Under the mandatory Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) scheme, 95.6% of the oil palm planted area in Malaysia covering 5.42 million ha have been certified in July 2023 under the latest edition of the MSPO standards.

While CSPO has gained acceptance by the global market, especially in Europe, there is an emerging trend towards adoption of regenerative agriculture which is perceived to be even more sustainable. Major fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies have embraced regenerative agriculture and made public commitments to source only regeneratively produced raw materials. As palm oil is a key raw material for many FMCGs, it is conceivable that they could require palm oil to be produced from regenerative agriculture methods, as part of their sourcing policy.

Regenerative agriculture is not a new concept; it was pioneered by the Rodale Institute in the US in the 1980s. While regenerative agriculture generally refers to a holistic approach to improve soil health, biodiversity and the environment, there is no standard or legal definition for this approach. There seems to be many shades of regenerative agriculture.

In checking 229 peer-reviewed journal articles and 25 practitioner websites in 2020 to define “regenerative agriculture”, Peter Newton from the University of Colorado found a wide range of definitions for this term which are based on processes (for example, use of cover crops, the integration of livestock, and reducing or eliminating tillage), outcomes (for example, to improve soil health, to sequester carbon, and to increase biodiversity), or combinations of the two.

The analysis identified the following major expected outcomes from regenerative agriculture:

•    To improve soil health (for example structure, soil organic matter, fertility)

•    To increase biodiversity

•    To increase carbon sequestration

•    To improve ecosystem health and ecosystem services

•     To improve water health (for example hydrology, storage, pollution reduction)

Oil palm has been planted as a monoculture crop for more than 100 years. Over the years, many agronomic and management practices have been developed and implemented to ensure good growth, production and economic sustainability of the crop. Over the past two decades or more, plantation management practices have been expanded to cover environmental and social aspects to ensure that palm oil is produced sustainably to deliver positive outcomes for people, planet and prosperity. Several sustainability standards have been developed and adopted for the production of sustainable palm oil, with principal certification schemes such as the RSPO, MSPO, ISCC (International Sustainability and Carbon Certification) and ISPO (Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil).

While palm oil produced according to these standards would support verifiable sustainable production, how well would the best management practices (BMPs) adopted by the industry align with the principles and practices for regenerative agriculture? To answer this, a subjective assessment was done on the impact of various BMPs against the core principles for regenerative agriculture regarding soil and soil health, water, biodiversity and climate mitigation. Overall, there is strong alignment between sustainable agriculture and regenerative agriculture practices.

The BMPs that have high positive impacts on all four dimensions of regenerative agriculture include:

•     No planting of oil palm on forest land

•     No planting on peat land of any depth

•     Maintenance of High Conservation Value (HCV) and High Carbon Stock (HCS) areas as set aside conservation areas in or around plantations

These BMPs are consistent with the NDPE (No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation) requirements under the RSPO 2018 Principles and Criteria and MSPO 2022 standards. The NDPE commitment has been widely accepted by the sustainable palm oil supply chain, principally growers and consumers as well as financial institutions.

Considering the strong alignment of the BMPs for sustainable palm oil production and the core dimensions of regenerative agriculture, what would be the motivation for oil palm planters to embrace the regenerative agriculture approach? While there is overlapping of BMPs, it should be appreciated that there are differences in the expected outcomes of the two systems. Whereas the RSPO Theory of Change for sustainable palm oil production has a broad triple bottom-line focus on People, Planet and Prosperity, regenerative agriculture has a stronger focus and emphasis on soil health, biodiversity and a shift away from monoculture with intercropping systems or integration with livestock.

In reality, sustainable agriculture and regenerative agriculture should be taken as complementary systems and they should not be mutually exclusive. Building on the progress made in the sustainable production of palm oil through the various certification systems, growers and supply chain actors should consider specific areas of improvement offered by adopting regenerative agriculture practices.

A key expected outcome of regenerative agriculture is the long-term management of soil fertility, restoration and rejuvenation. The importance of maintaining soil health cannot be overemphasised, especially in perennial crops like oil palm which has an economic life cycle of about 25 years and its estates are usually replanted with the same crop. Among soil management practices, the planting of leguminous cover crops and the application of empty fruit bunches as an organic mulch must be perpetuated.

Exposed soil surfaces during the oil palm establishment phase are quickly protected by planting legume cover crops. Legumes also return considerable amounts of organic matter from the leaf litter, sequester carbon dioxide and fix atmospheric nitrogen through the symbiotic relation between nitrogen-fixing soil rhizobial bacteria and the roots of the legumes. The ability to plant and maintain a pure legume ground cover in immature oil palm and rubber plantings used to be regarded as a hallmark of a competent planter. Considering the potentially significant agronomic and environmental benefits, it is very important that planters endeavour to establish and maintain good, thick, well-grown leguminous cover crops in plantations with immature oil palms.

It is a standard practice to apply empty fruit bunches (EFB) in immature and mature oil palm plantations for soil conservation and to increase soil organic matter. As EFBs are rich in plant nutrients, their application would minimise the use of inorganic fertilisers. However, there is a risk that EFBs may not be readily available to plantations and smallholders if they are used as a feedstock for the generation of renewable energy.

The Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) estimated that the 416 palm oil mills in Malaysia can produce about 19.8 million tonnes (based on fresh weight) of EFBs annually as feedstock for biofuel and generation of renewable energy. Based on the nutrient content of EFBs, 19.8 million tonnes of EFBs could supply an equivalent 138,600 tonnes urea, 55,440 tonnes rock phosphate, 382,140 tonnes muriate of potash and 87,120 tonnes of kieserite per year. These fertilisers would be lost if the available EFBs are used as the biomass feedstock for generation of renewable energy. It may be more prudent and beneficial in the long run to keep the use of EFBs within the oil palm circular economy rather than burning it to produce renewable energy.

There are advocates of regenerative agriculture who see it as an alternative system to conventional or sustainable agriculture that shifts away from monoculture. An article in the China Dialogue in March 2022 (Can regenerative agriculture transform palm oil?) claimed that mixing other crops with oil palm (rather than a monocrop culture) can improve soil health, sequester carbon and improve farmers’ incomes. A Mongabay article on Sept 14, 2021 (Oil palm alone can be damaging; with other crops, the benefits abound) also advocated intercropping of oil palm with two or more crops to reduce deforestation and improve biodiversity. While intercropping is practised by smallholders during the immature oil palm phase to boost their farm income, scaling up intercropping in mature areas, especially in plantations would be very challenging, if not impractical.

Based on the experience with the development of a sustainable palm oil supply chain, it is likely that consumers would require third-party verification that the commodities they receive have been produced according to regenerative agriculture principles. Given the overlap in BMPs for sustainable palm oil production and regenerative agriculture, RSPO, MSPO and other certification schemes could align and strengthen their standards to meet the requirements for regenerative agriculture.

However, if consumers require that the raw materials they source must be certified against specific regenerative agriculture standards, there are already several certification schemes available and there is no need to develop a specific standard for palm oil. A notable example is the Solidaridad/Control Union initiated regenagri standard which has to date certified 1,013,455ha of land under arable crops and perennial crops such as oil palm and coffee produced by more than 90,000 farms. Regenagri is an international regenerative agriculture programme for securing the health of the land and the well-being of those who live on it.

Teoh Cheng Hai was the first secretary-general of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and senior advisor to Solidaridad Network Asia

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