AFTER writing about palm oil from many angles – history, science, policy, leadership, labour, sustainability, tribute and field reality – I am now quietly exploring allegory as another way to explain the sector.
Stories can reach places where formal reports may not. That was why I supported the Upin & Ipin palm oil cartoon from the start.
Children may first come for the characters, colour and laughter, but along the way they begin to see the crop, the people and the work behind it. And one day, these young viewers become consumers, citizens and decision-makers with a little more understanding planted early.
My Star journey has also included the “If I Were...” pieces – imagining palm oil through a fruit bunch, loose fruits, a seed, ganoderma, rats, a pollinating weevil, and even bananas.
These lighter angles made serious subjects friendlier: fruit bunches explained milling, loose fruits explained quality, seeds explained breeding, and weevils explained ecology.
From there, allegory began to call. Aesop’s fables reminded me that a simple story can carry a lasting lesson.
Children can follow it. Adults can smile – and sometimes recognise themselves quietly in the mirror.
That is how my imagined world began to take shape. It remains work in progress: the characters are growing, the landscape is widening, and the lessons are still being pruned.
Story to glory
All this has reminded me of something larger: communication is not only about being correct. It is about being understood.
That may be one of the plantation sector’s greatest opportunities – not merely to produce better or defend better, but to explain better.
The plantation sector is not short of work, data, audits, standards, certificates, satellite images, reports, yield charts and acronyms.
In fact, we may have enough acronyms to make a fresh graduate wonder whether he has joined a plantation company or a secret intelligence agency.
FFB, OER, CPO, FFA, DOBI, ESG, MSPO, RSPO, GHG, NDPE, EUDR – after a while, even the oil palm may request a glossary and counselling.
Yet, for all this information, the sector remains insufficiently understood.
That is not only a problem. It is an invitation to turn facts into understanding, understanding into trust, and trust into shared stewardship.
For too long, the industry has assumed that good work will explain itself. It does not.
Even the ripest fruit bunch must still be harvested, transported and processed before its value is released.
Knowledge is the same. Trapped inside technical reports and conference slides, it may be correct, but not yet useful to society.
Today, a headline travels faster than a field visit. A slogan outruns a report. A viral photo can shape perception before the estate manager has even finished morning muster.
This is why communication is no longer decoration. It is strategic infrastructure.
A bridge is not built after the flood. Trust works the same way. It must be built early, maintained often and strengthened before the storm.
Facts to trust
Many outside the sector do not see plantations as living systems. They see fragments: a headline, campaign, photograph, viral clip, slogan or simplified accusation.
They may not see the estate road before sunrise, the harvester carrying the pole, the mechanic repairing a tractor in the heat, the mill engineer watching sterilisation cycles, or the smallholder worrying about fertiliser prices.
They may not see the young assistant manager balancing cost, compliance, workers and production while rain, road, labour and machinery hold their own separate meetings.
When people see only fragments, they form fragmented opinions. The answer is not to complain that the public does not understand. The answer is to help them understand.
A report may inform, a certificate may reassure and a chart may impress. But none alone will make people say: “Ah, now I understand why this sector matters.”
Understanding does not grow by dumping information on people. It grows when knowledge is made meaningful.
This is where the industry must talk better: not louder, not defensively, and not with corporate vocabulary wearing a necktie, but with clear, honest, human conversation.
Communication is not transmission. Communication is translation. If the audience does not understand, the message has not arrived.
In plantation language, it is like sending fresh fruit bunches to the mill but forgetting the transport. The crop is there. The mill is there. But the flow is broken.
So we must translate technical facts into public meaning: free fatty acids into freshness, ganoderma into biological persistence, mechanisation into terrain and economics, sustainability into trade-offs, and environmental, social and governance into people, land, water, biodiversity and livelihoods.
Plain language is not a lowering of standards. It is a raising of respect.
Talk to walk
Field visits do this powerfully. When people walk an estate, suspicion may not vanish immediately, but it often softens.
Assumptions crack. The plantation becomes a place with people, systems, constraints, humour and humanity.
A muddy boot can sometimes explain more than a thick report. Unlike the report, it does not require an executive summary.
Humour opens the door. Truth walks in quietly.
A good story does not merely lecture. It lingers. And when it lingers, it educates.
But storytelling must never become sugar-coating.
The plantation sector earns trust not by pretending everything is perfect, but by explaining reality honestly.
Plantations are not simple. Sustainability, labour, smallholder inclusion, mechanisation, replanting, compliance and milling investment are not simple.
Even harvesting a ripe bunch on hilly terrain after rain is not simple.
Anyone who thinks plantation work is simple – including some who judge it from brand offices – should try carrying a harvesting pole for one morning, preferably uphill, with leeches serving as unpaid auditors.
The sector operates in trade-offs: protecting forests, improving labour practices, supporting smallholders, reducing emissions, mechanising where possible, remaining competitive and feeding markets affordably.
The world likes simple narratives. Plantations live in complicated reality. The job is not to hide complexity. The job is to make complexity understandable.
Truth to trust
Sustainability is not a sermon. It is a negotiation among people, planet, prosperity and practicality: workers, smallholders, biodiversity, carbon, soil, water, yield, cost, markets, timelines, technology and affordability.
When green turns grey, communication must become clearer, not louder.
We must avoid both greenwashing and blackwashing. One over-polishes the sector until the floor becomes slippery. The other paints everything dark and calls it truth. Neither helps.
Truth is not weakness. It is the beginning of credibility.
Credibility grows when we are brave enough to say: this is what we have achieved, this remains difficult, this is being improved, policy must be realistic, industry must do better, and the public deserves fuller context. That is maturity.
The same honesty must also be applied inward. This is where tough love matters.
Tough love is not negativity. Backed by knowledge, it is care with courage. It means loving the sector enough to defend it, and enough to improve it.
It means pride without blindness, loyalty without defensiveness, and celebration without pretending.
In plantation terms, tough love is pruning. No palm enjoys pruning. But without pruning, access suffers, harvesting slows and productivity declines. Pruning is not destruction. It is preparation for better growth.
Prune to tune
One area needing pruning is the gap between boardroom language and estate reality.
Boardrooms speak of strategy, sustainability, digitalisation and value creation. On the ground, people speak of rain, roads, labour, fertiliser, diesel, breakdowns, loose fruits and whether the workers turned up.
Both languages are valid. But if they no longer understand each other, the organisation becomes two estates: one in PowerPoint, the other in mud.
Without clear leadership, boundaries and accountability, the road between them soon becomes impassable.
A dashboard cannot feel humidity, hear a supervisor short of workers, smell a mill problem before numbers appear, or know the value of one reliable mechanic, honest mandore or field conductor who knows the land.
Direction must travel down. Reality must travel up. Wisdom happens in between.
Hire to inspire
The future of palm oil will not be secured by acreage alone. It will be secured by talent.
Young people are often described as impatient, distracted, too digital and too questioning.
But perhaps they are asking questions we should have answered better. They want more than job descriptions. They want meaning, ethics, respect and a future worth telling families about.
We must not merely recruit them. We must induct them into meaning: science, people, food security, sustainability challenges, technology, field dignity and unfinished work.
Do not give them propaganda. Give them purpose.
A young assistant manager should not feel sent to the end of civilisation with patchy Internet and a probation letter.
He or she should feel they have entered a profession – one with history, standards, discipline, hardship, honour and intelligence of both head and hand.
Talent grows from salary, yes. But it also grows from story, mentorship, pathway and pride.
If we want good people to enter, stay and lead, we must tell a better story about the work. Not a false story. A better true story.
Plant to grant
So how do we begin? Here is a simple communication operating system: PLANT.
P for Pause and listen before correcting people. Understand their fear, doubt or assumption.
L for Link facts to meaning. Technical facts must travel beyond technical people.
A for Anchor every claim in evidence: data, examples and field proof.
N for Name the human story: workers, smallholders, families, communities, young planters and the people behind the palm.
T for Tell it again, patiently and consistently, because one good message once is not communication.
Before we ask society to understand plantations, we must first plant understanding.
This is not a public relations trick. It is a discipline.
The planter has always been operator, organiser, problem-solver, negotiator, weather-watcher, people-manager and occasional amateur psychologist. Now the planter must also become a communicator.
Not all planters need newspaper columns. Leave that burden to some of us. Not all need conferences. Not all need to dance on TikTok – and for some of us, that is mercy to the public.
But every planter can explain: to a visitor, student, policymaker, young recruit, family member or curious member of the public.
Nobody understands the living complexity of plantations better than those who have walked them.
The planter’s voice is credible because it carries mud. And mud, properly understood, is not dirt. It is evidence.
Hall to all
This is why the coming International Planters Conference in Kuala Lumpur on July 13-15, organised by the Incorporated Society of Planters, matters.
It will gather more than 1,000 planters and stakeholders across the supply chain and continents under one roof for serious plantation discourse.
At their best, conferences are not merely where slides meet air-conditioning. They are where experience meets evidence, field reality meets policy language, and old hands and young minds test ideas for the next season.
I look forward to sharing my perspective there on why and how can the plantation sector communicate better – with talk, truth and tough love.
Palm oil’s next harvest is not only in the field. It is also in understanding.
We must speak to policymakers, consumers, critics, young people, other stakeholders and ourselves – with responsible pride, honest reform and shared stewardship.
The sector need not shout. It must speak better: clearly, humanely and honestly, with facts in the pocket, mud on the boots, a pinch of humour in the voice and courage in the spine. For palm and people, soil and sun, the story is not ending. It is being replanted.
And if we plant understanding well, the next harvest may be trust – the kind that lasts beyond one season.
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.
