IF I were an ageing oil palm tree, I would rise each dawn like an old maestro – baton in hand, heart still full of rhythms once played, but muscles increasingly worn.
At 25 years and beyond – and sometimes even before that – I am no fledgling.
I am a veteran whose finest performances have already faded into echoes carried by the morning breeze.
In agronomy, this is the stage when productivity crests and begins to slip, and each season my height becomes less a symbol of strength and more a burden to harvesters stretching longer harvesting poles and wielding sickles skyward.
The taller I stand, the more every bunch feels like fruit harvested from a treetop in a gale.
Now imagine hundreds of thousands of us – tall, weathered, and less sure on our feet – swaying across endless estates.
This is not a postcard of the tropics, but a quiet truth across Malaysia and Indonesia, where many palms have grown beyond comfortable reach.
These towering elders take up valuable land, offer fewer fruits, demand greater effort to harvest, and, through sheer persistence, slow the pulse of the industry itself.
Ah, the irony. When crude palm oil prices are high, my planters pat my trunk and say, “Hold on, old friend – your fruits are fetching a fine price.”
Replanting is deferred, as short-term gains are chased in a market that feels generous today.
Yet herein lies the paradox: when prices are good, reinvestment in replant is delayed; when prices slump, coffers suddenly run dry and capital for renewal evaporates.
This double bind – ripe fruit now, worrisome futures later – has become an all-too-familiar refrain.
If I were poetic, I might say that not all trees can be hurried – yet all must eventually make way for the next generation.
But agronomy is not poetry. Delay is not virtue; it is calculated risk. An ageing oil palm is not a venerable oak growing wiser with time; it is a declining biomechanical unit governed by a biological clock.
As I stoop a little more each year, my yields dip, unit costs rise and harvesting becomes a groan of effort rather than a dance of efficiency.
And this is worsened by the shortage of skilled tall-palm harvesters and mechanisation solutions that still lag where they matter most.
Beyond economics and labour, an even more insidious threat lurks unseen.
Beneath the sun-baked soil, Ganoderma fungus and other pathogenic forces creep like subterranean thieves, gnawing at me and quietly draining vitality from what remains of me.
Sanitation and management buy time, but without a decisive breakthrough, this fungal menace erodes productivity one tree at a time.
It is a crisis unfolding beneath our feet, often unnoticed until the damage is done.
This interlocking web – ageing trees, labour shortages, mechanisation gaps and disease pressure – forms the inconvenient truth of the oil palm industry.
On the ground, the symptoms are unmistakable: stagnant or declining yields, unharvested fruit still can be found rotting on trees and in fields, rising input costs and logistics stretched thin.
Meanwhile, debates on sustainability standards and market access swirl in meetings and conferences, even as the real battle plays out quietly under tropical skies.
It is little wonder the industry has rallied around blunt war cries: “Replant or perish,” “Mechanise or perish,” “Yield, yield, yield.”
These are not slogans born of impatience; they are distilled urgency forged from lived reality.
A plantation dominated by ageing palms is like an orchestra crowded with retired musicians – graceful in memory, but faltering in performance.
Accelerated replanting does more than preserve palm oil output.
It restores the heartbeat of productivity and relieves the pressures that otherwise push growers toward land expansion and forest encroachment.
It is, paradoxically, both an economic and an environmental imperative.
Yet here lies the rub. Replanting is not cheap. Across Malaysia, the cumulative bill is estimated at around RM42bil – note, billions, not millions.
It is a formidable sum, but one that marks the line between long-term resilience and gradual erosion of competitiveness. Governments have stepped in with incentives, matching grants and targeted support for smallholders, yet progress continues to lag the ticking biological clock of millions of ageing trees.
In recent years, Malaysia’s replanting rate has hovered around 2% annually, well below the 4% to 5% - or even higher as a catch-up rate - needed merely to stabilise the age profile, let alone rejuvenate it.
If I were candid - and trees are nothing, if not honest - I would call this what it is: a waiting-game trap for the sector.
Owners and planters postpone renewal to harvest today’s returns, but this very delay undermines long-term productivity and resilience.
Good prices excite the present; under-investment dulls the future.
If planters accept veteran trader Dorab Mistry’s view - who earlier projected palm oil prices could surge to highs of RM5,500 per tonne in the first quarter of 2026 should global supplies tighten due to rising biofuel demand and Indonesia’s continued plantation seizures - history suggests replanting would once again be deferred.
Price optimism has a habit of encouraging harvest maximisation rather than renewal.
Yet even this bullish outlook has since been tempered, with Mistry recently revising his stance amid higher-than-expected production and swelling stockpiles.
The signal is clear: price cycles turn faster than trees grow.
Breaking this cycle demands more than hope or market timing.
It calls for policy realism, fiscal mechanisms firmly tied to reinvestment, credible workforce strategies, and harvesting mechanisation that works at field scale - not just in forecasts or presentations.
So if I were an oil palm - tall, weathered and carrying the quiet weight of years - I would whisper this truth across every plot, policy table and balance sheet:You cannot rush growth.
But there comes a moment when growth itself asks you to let go.
And perhaps the silent and harder question we must dare to ask is why we hesitate.
Is it because some no longer fully believe in the future of this sector - quietly diversifying, hedging bets or treating oil palm as a sunset industry to be harvested rather than renewed?
Or is it because a few would rather be remembered for today’s achievements, buoyed by good prices and favourable cycles, even if those gains rest on mediocre yields and deferred decisions?
These are not moral judgments; they are biological truths.
We are dealing with living trees, not spreadsheets or data centres. Biology does not reboot overnight.
Palms do not rejuvenate on command, nor can growth be accelerated like factories or industrial plants.
What we harvest today were investments from yesteryears. What is not replanted today will not be harvested tomorrow - no matter how clever the policy, how confident the forecast or how polished the presentation.
Replanting, like life, is not an admission of failure or greed. It is an act of wisdom.
A deliberate farewell that honours what has been given, while making space for what must come next.
Old trees do not fall because they are useless; they step aside because the soil is ready, the season has changed, and renewal demands courage more than nostalgia.
In plantations, as in life, holding on too long does not make us stronger - it only makes us taller, harder to manage, and eventually part of the very problem we refuse to confront.
The future of oil palm will not be decided by how long we hold on, but by how wisely - and how bravely - we choose to let go.
Joseph Tek Choon Yee has over 30 years of experience in the plantation industry, with a strong background in oil palm research and development, C-suite leadership and industry advocacy. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
