Cargill dan IPB Planned to Establish Indonesia’s First Educational Oil Palm Plantation
Bogor Agriculture University (IPB) in collaboration with Cargill held a joint ceremony to build Indonesia’s first oil palm teaching center in Indonesia. The event was held at IPB International Convention Center, on 18 July 2012. The cooperation was formulated by the exchange Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which was signed previously. The exchange of the MoU was performed by Rector of IPB, Prof. Dr. Ir. Herry Suhardiyanto, M.Sc with Chief Executive Officer of Cargill Tropical Palm Holdings, Angeline Ooi, and was graced by the Director of Annual Crops, Ministry of Agriculture, Dr. Ir. Rismansyah Danasaputra.
This newly established Teaching Center named "IPB-Cargill Oil Palm Teaching Center" is a small-scale commercial oil palm plantations, which is located in Jonggol, Bogor. The Center will provide high-quality training to students in plantation production and management within sustainable agricultural systems. "The establishment of the Oil Palm Teaching Center will enable students to gain insight on how to manage, and to handle problems on the actual scale of oil palm plantations" said Rector.
Prof. Dr. Ir. Herry Suhardiyanto, M.Sc stated, "We welcome the implementation of oil palm plantation development of education in this Jonggol. We hope this teaching center will be a vehicle for learning and training in the management of production units that are functionally managed ". In his opening remarks Prof. Dr. Ir. Herry Suhardiyanto, M.Sc expressed his sincere thanks and appreciation to the Chairman in particular the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture Faculty of Agriculture, Bogor Agricultural University and all the faculty members who have been very active to fight from the beginning for the realization of this oil palm plantation education center.
The teaching center will also serve as a reference for other palm oil companies in applying the standards of both the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil Board (ISPO), a non-profit organization of crude palm oil (CPO) producing countries. "I expect that this educational garden will implement Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which later on will become the training center for both large and social plantations," said Rector.
"We are proud to be setting an industry-leading example with this partnership, the first-ever initiative between a commercial oil palm grower and an educational institution. This is a demonstration of the significant role played by education in realizing next generation industry experts who appreciate and understand the importance of sustainable practices in palm oil. These future professionals will help to further industry standards on palm oil sustainability," said Angeline Ooi, Chief Executive Officer, Cargill Tropical Palm. (Wied).
