YOGYAKARTA – A professor and lecturer of agriculture of the Agriculture Faculty at the Yogyakarta-based University of Gadjah Mada (UGM), Prof. Dr. Ir. Bambang Suhartanto, DEA., IPU has called for an integration of cattle husbandry and oil palm plantation as an ideal integrated system of agriculture in Indonesia. Such integrated system will bring in greater benefits to farmers if it is implemented in oil palm plantations with the age of more than 15 years.
“There animal feeds can be abundantly available. The oil palm plantations can provide ruminant animal feeds, such as grasses, forbs and legumes, ferns and other kinds of edible plants for the livestock,” Bambang Suhartono said in his scientific speech titled “An Integrated System of Animal Feed Crops and Oil Palm Plantations To Support Production of Ruminant Livestock In Indonesia” presented during his inauguration ceremony as professor at the University of Gajah Mada.
“The integration of cattle farm and oil palm plantations will allow farmers to take advantage of the vegetation around oil palm trees as potential animal feeds for livestock as their side production from the oil palm plantations,” Bambang Suhartono said in Balai Senat Gedung Pusat UGM on Tuesday, 19 September 2023.
As the world’s largest producer of palm oil, Indonesia’s oil palm plantation areas have increased from 11.2 million hectares in 2016, to 14.66 million hectares in 2021 and to almost 15 million hectares in 2022 with a total production of 45.58 million tons of crude palm oil (CPO) or at the average of around 3.04 tons per hectare per year. The vegetation below the oil palm trees are potential to provide the ruminant animal feeds for the livestock.
Through cattle grazing of rotational method in the vegetation can reduce the cost of animal feeds and maintenance of the plantations. “It means the oil palm plantations can produce around 4 million cows per year with much lower cost,” he said.
According to him, besides the potential vegetation below the palm trees, the farmers can also use the pruned parts of palm trees, such as palm fronds and leaves, and the wastes from the processing of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) in the palm oil mills for the animal feeds.
“On the other side, the livestock will produce manure that can be used as fertilizer to fertilize the palm trees and to control weeds,” he said.
Bambang Suhartanto opined that ruminant livestock can reach their best if they are grazed on pasture where they can choose what they need from the vegetation. But not all livestock can be raised on pasture due to its limited availability, so that the husbandry in the oil palm plantations can be considered as a good option to realize Indonesia’s food self-sufficiency from livestock products. (*)
Source: sawitkita.id