Kit de ferramentas para pequenos proprietários
“Smallholders are local and indigenous peoples. We nurture our local wisdom to be able to listen to our lands and to listen to our forests. Forest and us are inseparable. For many generations of our ancestors, we have forged a close relationship with all plants, and all stones of Ifa and Pomang, (leaders in Dayak traditional worship) and nothing could come between us”.
Traditional Chief of Dayak Hibun, West Kalimantan, Indonesia.
Source: HCS-HCV Simplified Smallholder Field Trials 2022.
Smallholder farmers are essential to stop
commodity-driven deforestation
Much of the effort to halt and reverse commodity-driven deforestation in the tropics has focused on large-scale plantations, industrial forestry and global brands and supply chains. However, smallholders and independent small-scale farmers grow a substantial proportion of the world’s commodity crops within tropical forest landscapes and are crucial in the fight against commodity-driven deforestation.
Smallholders are critical to several key commodity sectors including supplying 60% of the world’s coffee, 80% of global cocoa and 85% of global natural rubber. But although smallholder farmers are vital to the economies of major commodity-producing nations, they rarely benefit from long-term support for conservation practices and often face tremendous pressures to clear land for cultivation to meet basic needs for food, livelihoods and provide for families and communities.
A Simplified HCSA Toolkit for Smallholders
The HCSA has worked together with
smallholders, small-scale farmers union and partners to develop a practical,
field-tested approach for smallholders to reduce and eliminate deforestation
from their farming practices.
Smallholders are often blamed for deforestation and often excluded from sustainable commodity supply chains, global markets and fair prices. The HCS-HCV Simplified Smallholder Approach Toolkit for Indonesia enables Indonesian smallholders to achieve deforestation-free practices and to identify and protect their forests and high conservation values, and to provide evidence that they meet the regulations in market countries as well as contribute to the Indonesian government commitments to reducing emissions.
Extensive field trials lead by SPKS took place with smallholder farmers in villages and communities in West Kalimantan over an area of 27,000 hectares from 2019 to 2023, followed by incorporating feedback from a public consultation.
The HCSA also worked with the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPSNR) in 2023 to learn from rubber producing smallholder farmers in Indonesia. The outcomes from the trial with GPSNR have been incorporated into the toolkit.
The result is a practical, step-by-step guide that supports smallholders and communities in Indonesia with the implementation of no-deforestation production by offering a simpler, digital version of the main global HCSA toolkit that small farmers can use themselves with some support from local NGOs.
While this toolkit was created and tested by small farmers in Indonesia who grow palm oil alongside other crops like rubber and use forest areas for practices like shifting cultivation, and therefore it is suitable only for the Indonesian landscape and social and productive context, its core ideas could be easily adapted for use with different crops and other regions/countries worldwide.
The Simplified Smallholder Toolkit
Available to view online or download in English and Indonesian.
