My deep gratitude to Kimberly Carlson @kimcarlson.bsky.social for the opportunity to lead this study with her. Thank you also to co-authors Robert Heilmayr and David Gaveau for their full support. Funding from #NASA, #USDA-NIFA, and #Formas made this work possible @universityofhawaii.bsky.social

This seems likely given the small share of global palm oil flowing to the #EU and the systems already in place for #RSPO mills to comply with the #EUDR. However, it is less clear that this exclusion will change smallholder access to mills that already source from these independent farmers.

If Europe mainly sources palm oil from #RSPO certified mills using identity preserved or segregated supply chain models, independent smallholders risk being passively excluded from European markets.

These findings raise important questions for smallholder inclusion in commodity supply chains under pressure to increase transparency, legality, and environmental responsibility. Our findings inform the potential impacts of the EU’s deforestation-free regulation (#EUDR):

This also highlights an opportunity for the #RSPO to strengthen its role in supporting #smallholder inclusion. Approaches such as jurisdictional certification or collaborations between private sector, civil society, and govts could help ensure that all producers within a given area are supported

What are the implications of these findings? For independent oil palm farmers, this potentially generates limited access to the positive benefits of #certification such as price transparency. #rspo #smallholders #supplychains #palmoil

We also found that the #RSPO ’s most stringent #supplychain models, identity preserved and #segregated, almost completely exclude all independent smallholders.

This is not because of “active” exclusion after mill certification. Instead, we call this “passive” exclusion where most certified mills never source from independent smallholders, and independent smallholder oil palm lands are less common near certified mills.

Working in Indonesia, we found that while independent smallholders produce ~1/3 of regional palm oil, they supply only 7% of fruit to Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certified mills.