Modern Oil Palm Cultivation
Modern Oil Palm Cultivation
Modern Oil Palm Cultivation
1. A modern oil palm plantation needs a grower who has learned how to cultivate oil palms.
Growing selected oil palms is not just a matter of picking the fruit; it is a modern crop.
The grower must learn how to do his work well.
The grower should ask for advice, so that he learns to do better and better.
The grower must think about his work and plan it, so that he can always do his work at the right time.
Selected oil palms give the grower much more work than the natural trees, but they yield much more.
Most often you will have to pay workmen for clearing the site of the plantation and removing tree stumps.
You may also have to pay workers to help you look after the young plantation. Weeds must not be allowed to get in the way of the oil palms, and the
trees must be protected from damage by rats and agoutis.
All this work takes a lot of time, and this means that you may not have enough time to look after large fields of food crops.
You may have to buy food for your family.
Before you start an oil palm plantation, you must calculate carefully whether you will be able to pay all these expenses.
Before planting your oil palms, you have to clear the forest and remove the tree stumps.
Then it takes a lot of time to sow the cover crop, dig holes in the plantation, take the seedlings out of the nursery, carry them to the plantation and
plant them.
All this work needs to be carefully done; you must take your time.
Never hurry if you want to be successful with your plantation.
Once the oil palms are planted, you must put wire netting around the young trees, you must spread fertilizer and keep watch over the plantation.
Young oil palms need a lot of care. It is better to make a smaller plantation, but look after it carefully.
Once the oil palms have begun to produce, the fruit must be harvested at the right moment.
If you cannot pick the fruit at the right moment, it becomes too ripe, many clusters will drop and the quality of the fruit will be less good.
Do not try to cultivate too large an area, or the work will be badly done.
It is better to cultivate a small plantation and to do the work well.
A small plantation that is well looked after can yield more than a large plantation that is badly looked after.
8. When the young oil palm has been planted in the palm grove, it produces male flowers.
The flowers form at the base of each leaf.
For several months, the oil palm produces only male flowers.
After that, for several months, it produces only female flowers.
It has a trunk and leaves. The trunk, sometimes called a stipe, is the stem of the palm.
At the tip of the stem there is one bud - one only:
This is the growing point, which makes the oil palm live and grow.
The growing point of the adult oil palm produces 20 to 25 leaves every year.
It is most important that the growing point should produce many leaves, because there will be a flower at the base of each leaf.
If there are many leaves, there will be many flowers. And if there are many flowers, there will be many clusters of fruit.
The oil palm grows well and produces a lot in regions where it is very hot, where the sun is very strong, and where it rains a great deal.
13. When oil palms bear many and large fruit clusters, they yield a lot of oil.
But to get a lot of oil, each fruit must also contain a lot of pulp, a shell that is not very thick, and a big kernel.
Research stations have developed varieties of oil palm which produce many large clusters with fruits that have a lot of pulp, a thin shell and a big
kernel.
These are selected oil palms.
In order to get a lot of oil, the female flowers of a dura palm are fertilized with the pollen from a pisifera palm.
Once they are fertilized, the female flowers turn into fruits.
These fruits are of the tenera variety.
The fruits of the tenera palm have a lot of pulp, a thin shell and a big kernel.
People simply pick the clusters of fruit from the oil palms that grow in the forest.
15. The growers can also earn money by raising beef cattle.
Beef cattle can be fed with the green fodder from the cover crop grown in the palm groves.
The grower can also feed his cattle with palm-kernel oil cake, that is, what is left over after extraction of the palm kernel oil.
Palm-kernel oil cake is a protein-rich food.
Oil palms are cultivated in the regions where they grow well and where there are oil mills.
A lot of sunshine
Where there is a lot of sunshine, there will be strong photosynthesis, provided the oil palm is in soil which gives it water and mineral salts.
The leaves grow large, the fruit ripens well, and there is more oil in the fruits.
Plentiful rain
If it does not rain much, or if it does not rain for several months, the leaves do not grow well.
If there are few new leaves, there are few flowers and few clusters of fruit.
There is less yield.
With traditional methods, a lot of oil is left in the pulp and the kernels.
The machines of the oil mills extract all the oil contained in the pulp and the kernels.
19. Where business companies or extension services can give the grower advice.
20. It is difficult for a grower to make the seeds of oil palms germinate.
Growers buy young seedlings which already have four or five leaves. Seedlings can be bought from research stations or extension services.
water them, protect them against erosion and weeds, give them fertilizers, protect them against insects and diseases.
If you put the nursery on a field which is already cultivated, pull up all the old crops: cocoa trees, coffee trees, oil palms.
Burn all the wood.
To improve the soil structure, you can then sow a green-manure crop, like Centrosema or Crotalaria.
When these crops have grown, work them into the soil by tilling again.
Then apply fertilizers: 500 kilogrammes of dicalcium phosphate per hectare.
22. Nursery bed is the name for the strip of soil where the oil palm seedlings are planted.
It is best to make the nursery on flat ground.
But, if the ground slopes, the beds must lie across the slope.
The beds should be 45 metres long and 3.5 metres wide.
The soil of the beds should be well worked to make it quite flat.
After that, apply a dressing of fertilizer. For instance, at La Mé, Ivory Coast, 250 kilogrammes of 10:10:20 fertilizer are applied per hectare.
You must give the seedlings a lot of water. But do not water when it is hot; it is best to water in the evening and the morning.
PUTTING UP SHELTERS
If you make a shelter, you need not mulch, but you must hoe very often.
Get rid of all the weeds, and always keep the soil loose.
Three months after transplanting, if the seedlings have grown well, apply monthly to each plant 15 to 20 grammes of a mixture of ammonium sulfate
and potassium chloride.
Spread the fertilizer mixture in a ring 10 centimetres from the seedling and water.
Hoe to work the fertilizer into the ground.
THE PLANTATION
25. In big plantations the forest trees are pulled up with the help of big machines.
But often the grower cannot use these machines.
26. When the soil of the plantation has been well cleared by fire, peg out the places where you will plant your seedlings.
To be sure to plant at the right density, you must peg out carefully before planting.
Then you will be sure of having always the same distance between rows and in each row the same distance between oil palms.
To get a good yield, you must plant the oil palms at the right density.
If the oil palms are planted too close together, the roots get in each other's way, and the leaves do not have enough air and sun: the yield will be
low.
If the oil palms are not planted close enough together, each separate tree produces much, but the roots do not use all the soil: the yield per
hectare will be low.
Trace lines across the slope and put in your pegs in straight lines; leave 7.8 meters between rows and 9 metres between pegs.
In this way you can plant 143 oil palms per hectare; this is the best density.
Pull out tree stumps and remove fallen trees close to the pegs, because these stumps and trees would interfere with the oil palms.
28. One month before planting, dig a hole at each place where you have put a peg.
The hole should be 0.60 metre long and wide, and 0.80 metre deep.
When you are digging the holes, cut any roots that you find in the soil.
Do not mix the soil from above and the soil from below.
A few days later fill in the holes with the earth you have dug out.
At the bottom of the hole, put the soil you have dug out from the top, and at the top put the soil you have dug out from below.
Fill the hole well, so that no saucer shape forms on top.
In this way the young plants can develop their root system before the dry season arrives.
Choose the biggest and the best-grown seedlings.
Leave in the nursery any seedlings that are small or badly grown.
Cut away all the dry leaves and the tip of leaves that are too long.
Put grease over the cut ends where you have removed leaf tips.
Tie the leaves together.
30. Do not lift the seedlings long before you plant them.
Lift and plant them in the course of a single day.
In order to keep a big ball of earth around the roots, lift and plant the palm oil seedlings with a plant setter.
31. If you use a Socfin plant setter, place the seedlings after lifting into a wooden box in order to carry them to the plantation.
32. If you use a Java plant setter, leave the seedling inside the plant setter when you carry it to the plantation.
The seedling is tied into the plant setter.
33. Make the holes for planting in the plantation, with the plant setter you use for lifting the seedlings from the nursery beds.
34. Certain animals may eat the young oil palm seedlings. To protect the seedlings, surround them with wire netting.
The right time to apply fertilizers is near the end of the rainy season.
The recommended dose of fertilizers for each plant is: 250 to 500 grammes of ammonium sulfate and 250 grammes of potassium chloride.
36. Cultivation
You must remove the weeds around the young oil palms.
This work is done with a hoe or a machete.
You must always cut away the dry leaves of the oil palm.
In order to cut the leaves without damage to the oil palm, your tools must be well sharpened.
Cut the leaves very close to the stem, so that no other plants can grow in the axil of the cut-off leaves.
Remove from the trunk any plants (ferns) that may grow in the axils of the leaves.
Remove also the male flowers.
The oil palm needs a lot of mineral salts to form its leaves and fruit clusters.
When the oil palm is young, it needs above all nitrogen.
When the oil palm has begun to produce, it needs a lot of potash.
Potash increases the number of fruit clusters, and makes them bigger.
HOW MUCH FERTILIZER TO APPLY
Example: Ivory Coast
Example: Benin
To protect the young trees, put in the axil of the leaves a mixture of sawdust and BHC.
Palm weevil (Rhynchophora)
There are other insects, but it is difficult for the grower to control them.
Diseases
HARVESTING
40. Harvesting needs much time and much care, because only those fruit clusters which are cut at the right moment yield a lot of good-quality
oil.
You must go through the plantation many times to pick the ripe clusters.
A cluster is ripe for harvesting when the fruits begin to turn red, and when 5 or 6 fruits drop to the ground.
If you wait too long before harvesting the clusters, harvesting takes much more time, because you must pick up all the fruits that have dropped to the
ground.
The fruits will also yield less oil, and the oil will be of less good quality.
If you do not wait long enough before harvesting the clusters, the fruit will not be ripe enough.
It will be more difficult to separate the fruits from the clusters and the clusters will yield less oil.
Any clusters that have dropped to the ground should be collected in a basket.
Fruits that have come loose must also be picked up.