4403. Oil palm cultivation.

1.  An oil palm produces fruits 3 to 4 years after it has been planted. No income for grower.

2.  TO MAKE AN OIL PALM PLANTATION TAKES MONEY.
Worken to clear the site of the plantation and removing tree stumps - flat land.
Buy seedlings and fertilisers
Pay workers to look after young plantation. Weeds removed. Trees protected from damage by rats and agoutis.

3. GROW OIL PALMS TAKE A LOT OF WORK.
Clear the forest, remove tree stumps.
A lot of time to sow the cover crop, dig holes in the plantation, take seedlings out of nursery, carry to plantation to plant them.
Put wire netting around the young trees, spread fertiliser and keep watch over the plantation.
Fruits must be harvested at the right moment.If it becomes too ripe, many clusters will drop and fruit quality will not be good.

LIFE CYCLE OF THE OIL PALM.
The oil palm may have a very long life.
Seeds germinate only after several years if not taken care. In research stations with very hot rooms, germinate after 90-100 days.

The seedling stays in the nursery for 1 year. When it has about 15 green leaves, it is planted in the palm grove. It will be 16 - 18 months old when it is planted in the palm grove.

The oil palm has no btanches. it has a trunk and leaves. The trunk (stipe) is the stem of the plam. It has only one bud at the tip of the stem. This is the growing point.if it dies, the tree dies.

The growing point of the adult oil palm produces 20 - 25 leaves per year. There is a flower at the base of each leaf. Many leaves - many flowers - many clusters of fruits.

Very hot, sun very strong and rains a great deal - oil palm grows very well. A hot temperature all year round (25 - 28 deg C( - oil palm make many leaves to produce may clusters of fruits. A lot of sunshine, plentiful rain soil is flat, permeable and rich. Presence of oil mills, extension services to the grower.

THE FRUIT5 OF THE OIL PALM YIELDS OIL. 

The clusters consit of spikelets. Spikelets contain the fruit. The fruit must be separated from the spikelets.

The fruits - Pulp, Seed, Kernel.

Pulp is crushed, it yields palm moil.

Seed - inside the shell of the seed is the kernel which contains the germ. Kernel crushed - palm kernel oil.

There are different varieties of oil palm

1. dura palms have kernels with a thick shell
2. pisifera palms have kernels with no shell.
3. tenera plams have kernels with a thin shell. 

To get a lot of oil, each fruit must contain a lot of pulp, a shell that is not very thick and a big kernel - produced by research stations. These are selected oil palms with big yields grown in modern oil palm plantations.

OIL MILLS. The machines extract all the oil in the pulp and kernels.

The growers earn money by raising beef cattle.
Cattle fed with the green fodder from the cover crop grown in the palm groves, palm-kernel oil cake (left over after extraction of the palm kernel oil.

 

HARVESTING
Only those fruit clusters which are cut at the right moment yield a lot of good-quality oil.

long-armed sickle, chisel, machete

For oil palms 4 - 7 years old, cutg the clusters with a machete.

Older than 12 years, use a long-armed sickel. 
Too high up, use bamboo ladders or else climb up the tree with a belt, wear spiked shoes.

Loose fruits or dropped off to the ground, should be collected and put in the basket. 

In Malaysia oil palm plantation, early morning sunny day, a 15-year-old boy wearing long sleeved shirt and long pants stand below a tall oil palm tree. He uses a long-armed sickle to cut off the leaves and the red fresh fruit bunches.

 

 

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A healthy oil palm tree produces approx 26 Fresh Fruit Bunches (FFB) per year for 20-30 years, using less land than other oil yielding crops.

Once the palm fruit ripes, it turns reddish gold in colour and must be harvested immediately and sent to the oil mill to ensure that oil produced is of the highest quality.

1. Fruit: Oil for food and non-food products, fertilisers, fuel, fibreboard.
2. Trunk: Furniture, recycled as organic matter.
3.Fronds: Animal feed, fibreboard, recycled as organic matter.

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SCYTHE - a tool used for cutting crops such as grass or corn, with a long curved blade at the end of a long pole attached to one or two short handles.

 

 
A sickle is a hand-held tool with a curved blade and a short wooden handle that is used for harvesting crops, cutting grass, and other tasks: