Friday afternoon as I was walking home after work, I encountered this young man pushing a bicycle loaded with palm oil jugs. Two 20-liter plastic jugs straddling the bicycle center bar and a third strapped to the rickety baggage rack on the back. Altogether the oil weighed about 130 lbs. He was drenched in sweat. Even with the bicycle, transporting his palm oil 10 kms to the local buyer at Bilili-Etat is hard work.
In fact, this is only part of the load and part of the journey. Altogether, he and his friends had 8 jugs of oil. And the bicycle stage of the journey was just from Songo to the canoe port at Lusekele, about 3miles. From there they planned to hire a canoe to take the oil 4 miles down river to Bilili, where the buyer has large storage tanks.
Imagine spending 1-½ days transporting the fruits of your labor in order to earn $40. And extracting the oil probably took a team of four or five guys a week of intense effort. I admire the tenacity of these young men, scratching a living out of very difficult circumstances. But I am also convinced that there must be a more efficient way for five people to earn $40 a week.
High-yielding short-stature oil palms reduce the work because the cutter doesn't have to climb. For the same reason they are safer. Higher yield cuts down on harvesting time for the same volume of oil. And higher oil percentage in fruit bunches means that cutters have to transport less waste.
So far the ACDI oil palm program has worked only with older adults. I'm wondering how can we incorporate these young guys in the program.
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