The Palm Pod
Planting the seeds of change, one pod at a time. Join us at The Palm Pod for engaging discussions, expert insights, and industry updates on sustainable palm oil, guiding consumers and businesses to make better choices for the people, planet and prosperity. This podcast is brought to you by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) - a global partnership to make palm oil sustainable.
The Palm Pod
Episode 8 - Digging Deeper: Why Regenerative Agriculture Matters – with Wild Asia
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Regenerative agriculture may hold the key to solving some of the world’s most critical agricultural challenges. By focusing on soil and plant health, it’s not only good for the planet—it’s also been shown to improve yields for RSPO Certified smallholders who adopt nature-based practices.
Through its Wild Asia Group Scheme Bio (WAGS Bio) initiative, Wild Asia partners with independent smallholders to strengthen their sustainability journey and put regenerative principles into practice.
In this episode, hosted by Fara Rom, we’re joined by Reza Azmi and John Howes from Wild Asia to explore the transformative potential of regenerative oil palm cultivation—and how it could reshape the future of sustainable agriculture.
Tune in to discover how regenerative practices are reshaping oil palm cultivation for a healthier planet and more resilient farming communities.
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Related Link(s):
Support Wild Asia & SPIRAL: spiral.wildasia.org
WAGS BIO: https://oilpalm.wildasia.org/wags/bio/
SPIRAL Living Labs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFHj5XEf1NY&list=PLn6HH3tQCLlQ7ucRi4Zs4AWsppTdDSgNW
Learn more about sustainable palm oil at www.rspo.org.
*The views and opinions expressed on The Palm Pod are solely those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of The Palm Pod or the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).
You are now listening to the palm pot, brought to you by RSPO, a global partnership to make palm oil sustainable. Hi, I'm Flora Rum, and you're tuning into the Palm Pot where we host engaging discussions, expert insights, and industry updates on sustainable palm oil, guiding consumers and businesses to make better choices for the planet. In today's episode, we're diving into the world of regenerative agriculture, a farming approach that's gaining momentum as an effective solution to the environmental challenges left in the wake of the Green Revolution. So, talking about the Green Revolution, it has brought a surge in global food production through the introduction of high-yield crop varieties and intensified farming practices. While it significantly improved food security, it also gave rise to new challenges such as soil degradation, land erosion, and reduced biodiversity. Today, regenerative agriculture is emerging as a promising solution to these issues, offering a more balanced approach that restores soil health while maintaining productivity. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification, UNCCD, estimates that adopting regenerative agriculture on a global scale could significantly cut agricultural greenhouse gas emissions or GHG emissions and restore up to 5 billion hectares of land over the next three years. To explore this important topic, we're joined by Reza Azmi and John House from Wild Asia, who are here to share insights into their Wild Asia Group Scheme Bio, a Rex Bio project, where this incredible initiative advances the sustainability journey of RSBO certified independent smallholders by promoting regenerative agricultural practices. Welcome, Reza and John to the Pompod.
SPEAKER_00Morning, Farah. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much for being here. And to begin, could you tell us about your roles in Wild Asia and we can start with Reza?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, actually, so myself and John were co-founders of Wild Asia. And as founders, we sort of started it from scratch. And so our role is really to guide a lot of the field programs that we've designed over the years. Wild Asia is now almost 20 years old. So in some ways, we it's sort of like we we got it started, uh, and now a lot of our attention is looking at not just the next 10 years, but how do how does this work that we started in Wild Asia, how does this continue for the next 50, 100 years from now?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're 21 years old. Um, so that seems like a long time ago. Um, I guess I wear a few hats, apart from being a founder. Uh, as an ecologist, I'm really interested in how we can uh make change in the field to the natural natural systems. Um I run some of the technical advisory at Wild Asia over the years. I've been involved in uh HCV programs, um, and I'm I'm running now really what we're calling the Nature Positive program, uh which we'll talk a little bit more about in this podcast.
SPEAKER_01To help our listeners understand a little bit more about regenerative agriculture, John, can you help me in describing in simple terms what it really means?
SPEAKER_00So it's really um a form of agriculture that moves away from chemical dependency and uh industrialized monoculture towards uh regeneration of the environment. And principally in an agricultural uh environment, that is the soil. You know, you can do you can make a lot of changes um on a farm, but probably nowhere more so than in the soil itself. So after uh I know a hundred years of of really quite um abusive uh agriculture in this world, um, we're in a situation now where many of our soils are depleted, uh they are they are eroded, um, we are we are losing uh all the nutrients and minerals. Uh and farmers are struggling. They are they are putting more and more chemicals into the soil. So regenerative agriculture is a way of looking at simple ways and means to build back the soil ecosystem, uh, increase biodiversity in the farm, increase the safety of the environment for the farmer and his his or her family, uh, and also looking at the connectivity in a landscape. So, how can we reconnect landscapes uh that have been sort of torn apart by industrialized agriculture?
SPEAKER_02One of the things that we often hear is that people say, Well, if you talk about chemical-free farming, isn't that organic farming? Or find people talking about centrophic agriculture, or if you look in the past, they had conservation agriculture or agroecology. So there's actually lots of terms. But I think a big thing for us was again, this is our bio, you know, the ecologist in us uh kind of thinking, is that if you look at what all ecosystems need, it is about coming back to the basics of biology. So it's about how these little things that you can't see the bacteria, the fungi, the the hidden microorganisms, and if you look after them, you would have better health outcomes. And this works uh as humans, this works in any aquatic or terrestrial ecosystems. But just look back a hundred years ago, and you find you know gems of literature and observations. If you look back a thousand years ago, you find all these good gems of wisdom and traditions, and they were getting it right.
SPEAKER_00It's just you know, we've forgotten about this. Um, and some something that I always talk to smallholders about uh when we talk to them about transitioning to bio-friendly, nature-positive farming is don't think of yourself as an oil palm farmer. Now you think of yourself as a fungi and microorganism farmer. Because if you get that right, the palms will be happy. If you get that wrong, the palms will be unhappy.
SPEAKER_01There's a really good perspective to have because we don't really necessarily think much about um soil health and uh plant health in general unless it gives profit. But we want to backtrack a little bit uh because we want to talk a bit more about Wild Asia um and how it was founded and how its mission has evolved over the years, leading to the development of uh Wax Bio, the regenerative agriculture initiative. Um, is regen agriculture the core principle of Wild Asia? Can you just share a little bit, Reza?
SPEAKER_02So the name alone, like Wild Asia, uh, already shows you that you know, I we were always focused around biodiversity. Um and the early work that we did was all around biodiversity assessments. So those HCVs, though before we called it HCVs, was a survey of what you had in patches of forests somewhere in the world, of forests or whatever habitats they were. So those biodiversity assessments was really our starting point. Uh, I think what was also interesting with us was that we took that experience into what was then the early RSPO system. So some of the earliest audits, uh, the Megro criteria being translated into field practices, uh we were involved. But that's when we opened up our eyes to the social dimensions of agriculture, the the best management practices uh in agriculture, as well as the environmental aspect. So I think the certification experience got us thinking a little bit more holistically. Um, and that was a godsend in a way because that gave us visibility about trying to look at things from many different perspectives, you know, of the standard, because we've read it inside out in different ways. Uh, but then taking it to practice. So the first big estates were some of the earliest examples of where we took theory into practice and seeing how it actually can be operationalized. So from the big estates came the next challenge, which is got smallholders next to these mills and they're not certified. And then the question was why? And then came the Wild Asia Group Scheme, which was the solution for how do you group and certify smallholders. So, in some ways, those those were the foundational pieces. Then, from the experience with smallholders, that showed us that policies and you know, nicely worded documents in the office doesn't translate into action. And and neither do smallholders really care whether this is principle two uh indicator four. Um, and I think that's really a big problem with certification today, which is it's all about uh too many jargons. The the reality of the fellow on the ground he doesn't know these things. Uh so Wag's bio was a response to this because you know, the early you know, major indicator is chemical use. So, how do you train somebody how to have safe use of chemicals? And then how do you make sure your workers and then the farmers and and the fellow who you buy the stuff from understands this? And I've got a PhD, so I spent like a year trying to understand what chemical safety means. How do you read labels? I built databases of all of these different things, and in the end, it was impossible to teach. Uh, so certification was being affected. So basically the smallholder certification, it was very hard for them to meet the standards. So it opened up the a second dimension, which is then where or how can we have agriculture without chemicals? And that that's really the birth of WAGS bio and trying to look at the past experiences, trying to look at historical evidence, um, and then trying to find recent evidence of you know this these practices and how they can be adopted in a in a scheme so that people have confidence that they can uh kind of pick it up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think to add to that, Razor, when we when we founded Wild Asia, one of the one of the core principles, we we all came from NGO backgrounds. Yeah, I was with Wetlands International, Razor was with World Wildlife Fund, we had other founders who were from various other NGO backgrounds, and we felt like there was little response from those NGOs often to the major issues of affecting the environment in Malaysia in particular, but in Southeast Asia. Um, you know, one of those was plantations, one of those was forestry, and one of those was tourism. And we we really set up Wild Asia with the idea of how do we how do we work within industries to to facilitate that change. Um so I think I think as Raz has put it, um we we identify those those people who can do that. Um and it and it's gone from being the big the big guys right the way down to the small the smallholders and the small farmers. And I think one of the taglines that we've been promoting, which I like, is um reimagining uh oil palm in Southeast Asia. So how can we imagine what oil palm could be? We know what it is now, but what's the future? And that's the legacy that we want to leave. Razor and myself and the others want to leave behind. We want to reimagine and change oil palm for the better.
SPEAKER_02But we did have another tag leg which we realized this year, which was just simply how to make oil palm irresistible.
SPEAKER_01So this idea that you know, because it's quite like well, it's like there's so much negativity, you know.
SPEAKER_02It's like somebody is getting getting so gung-ho, but I want to use organic, da-da-da-da-da. And then suddenly it's like, oh, but what about your human rights violations, you know? Oh, okay, then we have to fix that. So it's like people have no confidence to see the palm oil that they want. So I think in our case, we're like, well, what let's make it happen, and then palm will be completely acceptable. So the other thing with this whole conversation is today we mentioned palm, but in the last six months, we've had people come to us and talk about cassava and sugarcane and coconut and rubber. And we have no problems with saying that this is perfectly fine to think about how these ideas will cross over. So actually, it is more about this idea of transforming agriculture. Uh, but palm is the best uh case, especially from a Malaysian perspective, because you've got five million hectares of oil palm land already. So imagine making that five million hectares irresistible. That's that's another 50 years work ahead of it.
SPEAKER_01That's a great idea.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we we know how to get there.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I think this is something that uh I think Razor, you have touched a little bit. Wax Bio builds upon the foundation of Wild Asia Group Scheme Wax, basically. Can you tell us a bit about um how the formation of Wax started? Can you kind of take us through that?
SPEAKER_00So I think uh Razor's covered some of it already. Um, but you know, in in the the in the the global commodities market, it's very easy to see that the small, the small people, the small producers get marginalized. And especially when um standards start to come in and certification comes in. So, you know, around 2010, RSPO had already been happening for a couple of years by then. Um, and we we were sort of noticing that many of our smallholders were kind of getting left behind. So um, you know, WAGS um was created to try and address some of these challenges. Um, and how how could we get smallholders through a certification process like RSPO or others? Um so the group scheme was born, so WAGS Wild Asia group scheme. Um, and the idea was to group together as many uh farmers as possible and take them through that process. And that process of certification is often very costly, uh it's very difficult for single farmers to do it. It's almost impossible, I would say, for a single farmer to bother to do it. So as a group, they can go through and they can do it. And then that opens a door. I see it as opening a doorway, and that once you're certified, that doorway uh lets you into a whole new world of what's possible in terms of regen ag, in terms of uh uh increasing your uh your standards, your agricultural uh good agricultural practices, uh in terms of how you see your farm, in terms of many things, yeah. So um so that's where I would say WAGs came from. Um it seems like a long time ago now, 2010, but we have we've now got over 3,300 members. Uh so those are those are individual farmers, um, some with very small farms, some with uh you know small growers. Um we have taken two nearly two and a half thousand of those to a certified status, uh either MSPO or RSPO, and just touching about 30,000 hectares of certified land. So we're very proud of that. Um I think our aim is to grow that, um, but growing it per se uh is is not always easy, and and growing it per se is not necessarily the end goal. The end goal is to open that door for more farmers and then take them on this journey, uh, this nature-positive journey. And that's how we're gonna get the change we want to see.
SPEAKER_01One of the takeaways that I get is the way that World Asia approaches these initiatives also are very integrated and very heavily connected, especially when you mentioned about the smallholders that got into the initiatives are also World Asia staff, right? Like some of them do, I think uh some of the plantation that we went to for the tour in Sabah. Um, I think that is really empowering and it's really like a really smart way of kind of convincing the smallholder to be part of that initiative.
SPEAKER_02So one is people think it's convincing, but for me it was more one to have build a foundation around people who want to live in their community. So actually, it's a bit different for me. For me, it was more like if we can't get someone from that village to be excited about being part of this program, then what's the point?
SPEAKER_01That's true.
SPEAKER_02So, number two was then this idea that you know, how do we simplify things so that even a villager can get it?
SPEAKER_01Looking back at also my experience uh visiting the wax plantation, one of the things that struck me the most is how much greener wax bioplantations are from the conventional one. And throughout that um sharing sessions with different smallholders, they shared about experiencing higher yields on their wax bioplots, and some even tap into new income streams like growing mushrooms and other complementary crops. Can you share, uh, Reza, about what does it take for a plantation to become a wax bio farm? Can you walk us through the key processes and components that define a wax bioplot?
SPEAKER_02Um and I think the the main thing is that we we worked on practices. So this is about change adoption, so practice adoption. And what we thought of was how do you make things easy to do in the initial stage, that you don't have to learn so many things. Uh, it's easily accessible and and that it's easy to to start with. So we have this on a on a three-stage. I mean, we're okay. We now call it stage uh it's now three stages, but we've just added a fourth recently because we've got replanting to be thinking about. Um so the point was that in stage one, it was really about doing nothing, stopping their chemicals, allowing natural regeneration to occur. Number two was then accessing some of these bioproducts if they're accessible, and hence why I said we needed the BTUs to be operational in their area first for them to have access to these biomaterials.
SPEAKER_01Uh Braza, can you just uh explain what BTU means?
SPEAKER_02Biotransformation units. So the units that are producing what we call fermented biojuice or you know, just the sort of liquid-based uh fermented products. Uh and then we have two, you know, we have two types, which is uh either with fruit enzymes, uh fruit-based, vegetable-based, and that produces something else. And then the other one is fish waste, which produces something else. But anyway, so that the point is that in that stage one is do nothing, allow that regeneration to happen, add some of these new products which stimulate the soil biology, and not just soil biology, but actually all the bacteria and fungi that lives on the plant trunks itself, on the leaves, everywhere. Uh, and if it's possible to access some mill waste, because sometimes a large injection of organic matter can speed things up, but it's not always necessary. And stage three for us is then adding complexity. So the idea of do you allow certain areas to regrow, you know, that rewilding in an oil palm block, or can there be intercrops like cocoa and other crops? Uh gingers work really well in the understory because it doesn't need much light. So that's why you see in in the in the trial plots, we we we worked on gingers because that was the easiest thing to integrate integrate. Um and there might be other things you can add in terms of building complexity at the at the farm level.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um, I think to do nothing is is one of our sort of taglines of old. Um, but there is a few other things that we do in that stage one, as there's what we call the frond stack modification, where the idea when we looked at different blocks of oil palm, we we thought, what is this what is the best soil in the whole block? And invariably it's below the frond stack. It's where fronds have been massed uh and dumped for maybe maybe five, ten years in cases. So the soil organic matter buildup under those frond stacks is really good. Um, but frond stacks often take a long while to decompose because they are uh the fronds can be you know 10-15 meters long and they have this arching rib which sticks them off the ground. And when they the palm is not in connection with the ground, the decomposition process takes a long time. So just by simply cutting the frond into two or three pieces, three or four pieces, uh, and laying it flatter on the ground and spreading out the frond stacks, you get this process of decomposition happening faster. Um, then as Razor said, yeah, some injection of organic matter, whether it's EFBs or mill waste, other mill waste or compost or animal waste, it can be anything, yeah. Um that's an important component. Um, and then what Razor mentioned about the cut cutting and dropping the ground cover is also critically important because the more different diversity, higher diversity of plants you have growing in that soil, with living roots functioning in that soil, putting sugars into that soil, feeding the microbiome in that soil, feeding the fungus in that soil, the more life you have, the more, the more the soil is going to be giving back to the palm. So if you spray that uh with herbicide, you kill the roots. So you actually you're actually contributing quite a lot to the death of the soil. If you simply cut it and allow it to rot, the plant regenerates. Three or four months later, you have to cut again. So the living root is a very important part of the living soil. Yeah, that's true.
SPEAKER_01It's really great to see there's a lot of components that is being um looked at in terms of regenerative agriculture uh in these um initiatives. Um, but I think it's also important to bring out the numbers. So I I wanna uh uh I want to let the audience know about the benefit. Basically, like I mentioned, how smallholders saying that the yields are a lot higher. Can you um share on what are the outcomes uh that while Asia has seen over the years uh from these initiatives?
SPEAKER_02I think the overwhelming thing is uh although the industry is concerned about yields, managing or tracking yields in a smallholder block is not the same. So I'm gonna separate out between smallholders and estates because actually what we found was uh the yield question is best addressed in an estate environment compared to the smallholders. So uh on the ground, like you know, we're already seeing like first indication. So often people say, Oh, my leaves are greener. So this is just uh observational. Uh so some would say there's more female flowers, and the the weight of their fruit bunches has has increased. So these are the tangible things that the farmers are seeing for themselves. Often we're then hearing, oh, my yields have gone up from one metric ton this month to now 1.5. You know, that there's they are noticing some change. Then at and that's at a yield level. On the soil level, we've been tracking a few things: water infiltration, earthworm counts, and and they're two very important and quite powerful indicators. The water infiltration is just how alive your soils are, because if you have no pores in your soil, your soil is dead. So, actually, what people don't realize is most agriculture, industrial land is dead because it's hard, it's not the water is not able to flow. That means there's oxygen not able to get in or carbon dioxide able to get out. So the water infiltration improves. Uh, and we know this one empirically because we have the test plots and we've been monitoring over these three, four years. The other one, which is also very clear, is earthworm biomass density goes up. And earthworms are your great bioengineers. So the more you have them, the more stuff is going on in the soil, the more of that soil becomes food for your plant. So we know that that's uh definitely a good sign. And visually you can see it on the on the forest on the farm floor, because you see all these uh worm castings everywhere. So that's at the soil level. Um, we went a little bit crazy, so then we did uh life cycle assessment and we have remote sensing monitoring of these farms. So the the idea being that we now have another set of data which is actually looking at um the farm emissions themselves. So just calculated a WAGS buyer farm can reduce your farm emissions by as much as about 60 to 70 percent. And the remote sensing work, which looks at net ecosystem exchange, so it's just a measure of how much uh a unit of area is sequestering against how much it's emitting. So it's emissions minus sequestration. Um, and then we're seeing positive results. So actually, these little bioplots are increasing its sequestration. That means that the net ecosystem exchange gets better, and in some cases, they're in the negatives, which is uh actually at a point where it's a net carbon sink, which is what you want to get to. So all in all, these are the results from the smallholder blocks, and we've used them to start talking to some of the estate, and and we had some of the early trials maybe like four or five years ago. But what's overwhelmingly clear is you're getting somewhere between 10 to 31 percent yield improvements. So I love this idea that it's the smallholders who's driving this change.
SPEAKER_00We learnt so much from our early adopter smallholders. And uh there's one particular gentleman in Perak uh called Mr. Neil, um, who he was one of our he was one of our early influencers. We learned from him various things that we've now trialed on a big scale. Um that you know, he was just uh a Chinese farmer in a small town talking to his friends in the coffee shop, um, talking about different things they could try, and they were trying these things out and doing it very quietly. Um, and we um, you know, so we are very happy to come along and learn from him uh and see what he's doing. And and then now, as Razor said, that's some of that work is now being done in the bigger estates. Um, so it's good, it's good to see that sort of traveling upwards in the system. Yeah, so uh early in the early days, um, you know, we were also just exploring different options, but learning from these smallholders too, which I think is a really important message to get across.
SPEAKER_02By putting ourselves out there, we find these gems. So there's no there's not just the Neo, there's this there's a bidin, you know, an indigenous Orangasli fella sitting in Kerry Island. Uh, there is Moharam sitting in another village somewhere on the other side. Uh now the Moharam, we have what like one one remark he made was like I now feel the burden, not of life, but it was like the the burden of farming has been lifted. And that I enjoy now jogging in the back of my farm, and my children can play in the farm. I have no problems because I have no chemicals anymore. And and it's just filled with. I mean, he's the one that he's got an infestation of earthworms because it's literally everywhere. Um, and if you've ever visited this farm, it's like it's it is amazing. But he was my biofarmer number one because we ran that workshop in the village, and he was the first guy who said, Okay, well, let's just try it, and then he just kept on doing. The challenge now is like, especially you mentioned uh the intercrop. So now that we've taught people mushrooms, gingers, these other crops, I need help to find buyers for them. Because if he's planted it, it would be great if I can just say, Okay, look, whatever you plant, I'll buy, and that's extra income for the fella. And so, so yeah, so that if there's a listener out there, uh, I think my missing piece now is off takers for some of these smaller products and getting that to market. And so we've got like sabbat gingers, and number two is that we have sabbat gingers growing under oil palm. Uh, they look smaller and scragglier, but the taste is great. And the ladies in I think it was Tongot area, they love this because they realize that ginger prices have gone crazy, and so for them, it was like just a local product that they could sell amongst the the various families uh was already an income source.
SPEAKER_01Pulling you back to the RSPR certification conversation. Um, how does Wild Asia envision integrating these components into the RSPR certification system? And what what what would that look like to you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so actually there's not much change you need to have here. Because actually, there's already criteria around soil health and and what have you. It's it's just practice. Like, how do you show this practice can work? So I think we need to have this network building up so that we have more practice adoption in the future. Future, I'm talking like 10 years down the road. Maybe we can think about enhancing an indicator or two. But I think the biggest challenge now is just getting enough practice adoption.
SPEAKER_01John, anything you want to add on?
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, I don't think so in that regard. I I think something that we we've been sort of looking at. Um, okay, I I've always had, as an ecologist, I always have this kind of bit of a grumble about RSPO buffer zones, yeah, um, along along watercourses. And I I've, you know, for 20 years now I'm visiting many, many estates around Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and they're all RSPO certified, and I don't really see any kind of tangible buffer zone along a water course. It's always planted right to the edge, and there's a little sign saying RSPO buffer zone, and it'll be 5, 10, 15 meters wide, no spraying. Um, but otherwise it looks exactly the same as the rest of the estate. So one of the things we've been toying with is an idea of yes, you can maintain that as your buffer, but then you have the field block behind it as uh as a as a bio-nature positive block where you you remove chemical use, you start some of these phase one, two, three options we've just talked about, and you you so you really have a protective buffer for that water course. Because so much of what happens in the especially a statewide uh oil palm industry is you know it ends up in that river, it ends up in that stream, and it ends up in the big river and it ends up in the sea. So I think that's that's one thing that I think uh we we could look at in more detail as to how RSPO can the certification system could could adopt some of these principles of biological farming or nature-deported farming.
SPEAKER_01Okay, we are moving to the final, last but not least question uh for this episode. So, looking ahead, what role do you see regenerative agriculture play in the future of sustainable palm oil? And as you can, as you say also uh previously, it's not just about palm oil, it's also agriculture uh in broader terms. What is needed for businesses and policymakers and even consumers to make this a real shift, to make this shift a reality?
SPEAKER_00Where where I come from uh in Wales, uh it's a largely an agricultural farming community. Yeah, my sister is a farmer, sheep farmer, um, and you know, farmers are seen as the sort of guardians of the countryside, the guardians of nature. They are given the opportunity to grow products, whatever that may be, but also to look after the environment. Now, in Malaysia and Southeast Asia, that is not the case. We we do not look at our farmers as guardians, we do not look at our plantation companies, the bigger states, as guardians. Now, I would like to see that change happen where you know we've got bigger states, big government-linked companies in Malaysia, especially, who are looking after huge percentages of our countryside. So when people come out of the city into the countryside in Malaysia, they're in oil palm and everyone thinks it's just you know a dead environment. But actually, this could be a really interesting sort of future environment for our children and our grandchildren. It could be something uh, if you get this change, um, that the big companies especially go above and beyond RSPO. RSPO, MSPO is just there for them to achieve. But, you know, we're now working with one or two estates, small estates, where for the first time ever I heard uh one of the board members, you know, sort of say we want to do X, Y, and Z because it's the right thing to do. I'd never heard that before in 25 years of working an oil palm in Malaysia. So this is this is these are small changes, but um, the idea that we can create more guardians, we can create more biodiversity, more habitat, more connectivity in the landscape, I think are all important things we need to push for.
SPEAKER_02If we want to think about what sustainability can bring, especially in a commodity, I think we've got to see it differently. Because palm, we have to expect or accept that it is a commodity product. It's just about a hundred years old, but we have used this as an industrial product. So hence the custodian of land, like John Singh, it was never there. But the model of agriculture dates back some 10,000 years ago. If you think about the fertile crescent, now our modern agriculture is based around these ideas, and the fertile crescent today is dead, it's no longer fertile. So if the industrial agriculture model of oil palm is built around an outdated, uh defunct model, we have to accept that. You know, what is this other way of doing things? And that's why I think, you know, look beyond all of that and look to traditional practices in the Amazons and whatever, you know, there's different ways. And then we know now with biology, there is a different way. We understand how plants are in a symbiosis with bacteria and fungi, which we didn't know 10 years ago, because of just the way that we can now see this change happening. So that's a big uh mindset shift. Now, as a commodity, we need to think about how do we use the current relationship between the brands, the buyers, and stuff. So that's why I feel that you know certification schemes are great to work with because that whole chain is already there. All we're influencing is the outcome, which no one sees. And now I can tell you how many earthworms are growing, and and that tells you that that farm that's connected to you is improving. So the more practice, the more impact outcome-related uh level of stuff that you that you bring to the table. This is going to supercharge any supply chain. We have to think that actually a lot of these movements is about people, and that's the center of this change, not certification systems on its own.
SPEAKER_01The main theme that I get from our overall conversation is about partnership and connectivity, and it kind of reflects to our SBO's global vision uh to make palm oil sustainable. And I think that wraps up uh the episode uh on regenerative agriculture today, and I would like to give a big thank you to Reza and John for spending your time. It has been a really insightful conversation. So thank you so much, Reza and John, um, for coming to the pump pod.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for having us.
SPEAKER_01Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the pump pod on your favorite podcasting platforms. Feel free to share your feedback for our next episode. I was speaking to our guests, Reza Asmi and John House from Mall Asia. I'm Farum, and this is the PomPod.