This article was originally published by Journal of Asian Labour Review.
“Sometimes,” Baso said quietly, reminiscing about his untended oil palm plot now overtaken by weeds, “this grant feels no different than being forced into debt, especially if it’s your first time planting.” For four years, he has helped manage a seventy-two-hectare replanting scheme shared among members of his smallholder group. The grant, promised as renewal, arrived only after years of waiting and endlessly shifting requirements.
“Without [state] support, who would even start planting?” he said, half in jest. The group’s first harvest after a full 25-30 years planting cycle brought in barely Rp. 30 million (around US$1,800), split fourteen ways. To make up for shortfalls, they mixed certified seeds with cheaper, unlicensed ones or collected loose fruits with lower yields. “Ideally, we borrow from banks for good seeds,” Baso explained. “Credit unions are fine, but better for school fees or fixing motorbikes. That’s the only way to get good seeds and good results.”
Like many oil palm smallholders across Indonesia’s plantation zones, Baso is part of a group now enrolled in a state-backed program to green the entire supply chain – an effort that ties sustainability and climate governance to finance. Yet instead of renewal, what smallholders encounter is uncertainty. Many are caught in overlapping speculative regimes. While all navigate the demands of replanting finance, some experiment with emerging carbon markets or sell land to bauxite companies while working double shifts in nearby mines. Despite their different forms, these projects share the same rhetoric of sustainability, inclusion, and future prosperity. In practice, they bind rural communities to long timelines, unstable institutions, and the weight of mounting debt.
Beneath the language of green development that is so often invoked in global discourses of climate change and poverty alleviation lies a more profound transformation: the financialisation of rural life under climate capitalism. Here, land and labour are no longer valued for what they produce in the present, but for what they might secure in the future. Risk, meanwhile, flows relentlessly downward.
To continue reading this article and gain full access to its insights, please visit the source page linked below:
Simanjuntak, A. H. 2026. Red Earth, Green Lies: Oil Palm, Debt, and Socio-Ecological Calamity. Journal of Asian Labour Review.
This article is also available in Bahasa Indonesia:
Simanjuntak, Atmaezer H. 2026. Utang, Penghijauan, dan Rezim Ekonomi Spekulatif Perkebunan Indonesia. Translated by Adrianus V. Pratama. Transnational Palm Oil Labour Solidarity (TPOLS).