Without harvesters and other essential plantation workers, nothing of consequence moves.
Let’s face it, the real battle for Malaysia’s oil palm industry isn’t fought over presentations with laser-pointers and catered kuih in climate-controlled boardrooms.
It’s happening out in the field – across 5.6 million hectares of estates where the sun blazes, rain pours and planters juggle rising costs, labour shortages and a growing stack of compliance paperwork that seems to multiply faster than the loose fruit on the ground.
The biggest tragedy?
Ripe fruit bunches are left unharvested and loose fruit are left rotting. We’re not just losing potential yield in theory – we’re losing it by the tonnes and tonnes.
And at the core of it all is one stubborn, still unsolved truth: we need workers.
Real, breathing, skilled hands in the field.
Yields and revenue are slipping
Let’s not sugar-coat it: oil palm yields are not flatlining – they’re slipping. Land expansion is effectively frozen.
Our national average sits at 16.7 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches per hectare per year, while top yielding estates hit between 25 tonnes and 30 tonnes per hectare per year.
That yield gap? The yield loss is bleeding us.
And yet, the real tragedy is not the absence of fruit bunches – it’s the absence of hands that account for a large part of the losses seen.
All the best planting materials and agritech practices won’t matter if there aren’t enough skilled harvesters.
No harvesters means no bunches at the weighbridge, which mean no revenue. It really is that simple.
Just one extra tonne of fruit bunch per hectare, across five million hectares of mature palms, means RM5bil in revenue.
At the current total effective tax rate on planters of 31.6%, that’s RM1.6 billion in government revenue vanishing every year.
And that’s for just one tonne per hectare yield loss.
Even without fertiliser, palms still fruit, although usually less.
Nature, it seems, doesn’t stop giving. But we’re leaving money, literally, on the tree.
At RM1,000 per tonne, every 20kg unharvested bunch is RM20 blown to the wind.
Multiply that across estates and regions and you get not just missed earnings, but a full-blown economic own goal.
Unspoken global truth
Think Malaysia is alone in needing migrant workers? Think again.
The mighty, mechanised US agricultural sector runs heavily on “unauthorised” workers – a genteel euphemism for the non-documented, non-legal labour force that makes up over 40% of crop farmworkers, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
And while the United States publicly debates immigration policy, it also quietly expands seasonal permits.
Similar requirements for migrant workers exists in other developed economies.
The economics of agriculture always wins, even when politics drags its feet.
Back home, however, the issue remains strangely radioactive.
The plantation sector has long pleaded for a more transparent, scalable and legal pathway for foreign workers. Yet approvals are slow, policies inconsistent and the rationale? Often vague.
Perhaps I lack the full context to fully appreciate it, but it appears to be a commonly employed practice to offer incentives in order to expedite certain processes.
Maybe it’s national security. Maybe optics.
But let’s unpack the reality.
Plantation workers don’t hang out in shopping malls or moonlight as gig workers in the city.
They live and work in situ, within built-in plantation communities complete with housing and other facilities. These are self-contained bubbles, not part of the urban spillover.
The risks and concerns often associated with urban migrant populations simply don’t apply here.
Contrary to public fear, migrant plantation workers aren’t climbing the corporate ladder. Supervisory and management roles? They’re also not being replaced either.
Instead, they fill manual, labour-intensive roles – the ones most locals have long abandoned. And who can blame them? Harvesting palms isn’t just 3D (dirty, dangerous, difficult) – it’s also sunburn-inducing and back-breaking.
But without migrant workers, the bunches simply don’t get harvested and the plantations and economy take the big hit.
This is not a crisis of resources to source from, but one of political will and strategic clarity.
What’s missing is decisive will to fully grasp the magnitude of current losses, and the potential erosion of investor confidence in a sector that is vital to the national economy.
Equally pressing is the need for a clear, sector-specific framework to legally recruit, accommodate, and retain workers in a sustainable manner. Instead, we recycle the same old slogans every time labour shortages hit the headlines.
Like clockwork: “Get locals in” and “Mechanise”. Catchy, sure. But about as useful as handing a drone to a harvester and telling him to “just fly it up”.
On paper, localising the workforce sounds progressive. In reality, it’s optimistic. Proposals are made with good intentions, but rarely with boots-on-ground understanding.
Consider the end-2027 goal set by a prominent Malaysian planter to achieve 100% local-labour participation.
It’s a commendable aspiration, though, it applies only to non-harvesting roles (about 50% of the workforce) and comes with a proposed minimum wage of RM3,000. While well-intentioned, it’s a tough model to implement.
Similarly, the ambition to improve the labour-to-land ratio to 1:17.5 suggests a drive for greater efficiency. However, field realities often reflect 1:8, occasionally 1:12 in flatter areas.
Reaching a 1:17.5 ratio may remain an aspirational benchmark – especially for those familiar with the complexities and constraints faced daily in the field.
Mechanisation: Hype or Hope?
Let’s give credit where its due – mechanisation has helped in crop evacuation, fertilising and spraying.
But harvesting remains the Achilles’ heel. Plenty of gadgets and harvesting machines have been trialled.
Most end up as expensive conversation pieces.
Steep slopes, wet soil, unpredictable rain and 10m-tall or more palms don’t exactly scream “automation-ready” and the ripe bunches are still cut one bunch at a time.
Whoever cracks harvesting at scale economically should skip the plantation awards dinner and head straight to Oslo for the Nobel Prize.
Until then, we remain reliant on traditional tools – sickles and harvesting poles.
While there have been notable improvements, such as lighter carbon fibre poles and sharper blades that require less maintenance, the core challenge persists: there are simply too few workers available to use them.
This is where policy often fumbles the ball. You can’t use a factory-style labour template for oil palm. This sector is season-sensitive, terrain-dependent and operationally unique.
Trying to apply a generic national labour policy is like trying to harvest a bunch with a selfie stick – it looks modern, but achieves nothing.
The sector has long called for a dedicated one-stop centre to manage legal, transparent plantation labour recruitment. Yet the idea continues to echo into a void, unheard or unprioritised.
A need for national attention
Let’s not forget what’s at stake.
The oil palm industry contributes over RM100bil annually, pays RM11bil in taxes, supports four million livelihoods, includes 450,000 smallholders and powers countless downstream industries.
It’s the most sustainable and productive vegetable oil producer by far.
This isn’t just an industry. It’s a strategic pillar of national prosperity and our efficient land use and it deserves impactful strategic solutions.
Look across the straits, the writing is on the wall.
Our neighbour has what I now call the three-six-eight competitive advantage: three times our planted area (they need their own workers), six times the land (room to grow) and eight times the population (built-in demand).
And while they grow and consume, we have to export 90% of what we produce. We’re not just in different leagues, we’re now playing different sports.
We don’t need another roundtable.
We need more meaningful discussions with industry and an empowered, cross-ministerial task force, backed by political will and measured by clear performance indicators.
Not just feel-good talk, but tangible outcomes. This isn’t just a wake-up call, it’s Code Red. The truth is simple. The ripe bunches are hanging.
The trees are producing, and can produce more.
But without harvesters and other essential plantation workers, nothing of consequence moves.
By the way, the next time someone says, “Just get locals” or “Just mechanise and automate”, kindly hand them a harvesting pole with a sickle, point to a 10m tall palm on a steep slope, and say: “Be my guest.”
Joseph Tek Choon Yee has over 30 years 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.
