Malaysian oil palm planters struggle to match demand as foreign worker shortage bites
- Output growth in Malaysia slumped to a five-year low last year as planters grapple with finding foreign workers for harvesting jobs considered as dirty by locals
- Companies are looking for ways to revamp field work to ease the crunch by using automation and mechanisation in harvesting
While high prices typically encourage planting and production of crops, output in No 2 grower Malaysia slumped to a five-year low last year and planters say the main reason for that is the industry’s worst-ever shortage of workers.
“The volume of palm oil that will come onto the market is more or less fixed and not going to grow very much,” said Julian Conway McGill, head of Southeast Asia at LMC International, a consulting firm. “But the world keeps needing more vegetable oil for food. We need to get those yields up.”
Shunned by locals for being dirty, dangerous, and even demeaning, harvesting jobs on Malaysian estates are mostly taken by foreign workers that make up around 85 per cent of the labour force. Planters have grappled with a decreasing supply of workers for years as harvesters – many of whom were Indonesians – chose to return home for better wages, or preferred jobs in the city.