Policy Narratives , Landholder Engagement , and Oil Palm Expansion on the Malaysian and Indonesian Frontiers

Over recent decades a structural transformation has affected agriculture in frontier areas of Malaysian Borneo and Outer Island Indonesia with the rapid conversion of agricultural lands, fallows, and formerly forested areas into oil palm. These frontiers have similar positions in the international political economy of oil palm and have complementary resource endowments. Yet there are also significant differences in systems of governance and policy frameworks regarding land. At the same time the capacity of state actors to facilitate the transformation of these agrarian frontiers and to take up these opportunities fluctuate over time and are subject to contestation nationally and internationally. In seeking to transform these frontiers from “marginal” into “productive” areas, policy makers face a common set of challenges that include attracting development capital, finding the necessary disciplined labour force, delivering land for estate development, maintaining local legitimacy, and dealing with local contestation. In comparing the transition in both Malaysia and Indonesia this paper describes how the “frontier” is created and transformed through particular policy narratives. These policy narratives facilitate the transformation of whole landscapes into oil palm by rendering obscure indigenous forms of agriculture and land tenure while creating reserves of available “state” or “idle” customary land, and counterpoising smallholder “marginality” and “backwardness” to the modernity of contemporary estate agriculture. The paper