Employing the Best Agronomic Practices with Regenerative and Precision Agriculture

IOI Corporation Berhad (IOI) strives to be one of the most cost-efficient palm oil producers in the country by maximising crop/oil yields per hectare through the adoption of best agronomic practices and implementing any appropriate science and technological advancement.

Our oil yield per hectare is about 50% higher than the national average, contributing to climate change mitigation by optimising land use and enhancing land management in our palm oil production.

To bring about these beneficial effects that would support and enhance nature’s well-being, we are taking multiple proactive steps to generate awareness of its importance and to drive innovation to help develop nature-based solutions that can harness the power of nature’s ecosystem in order to promote its health and resilience. Ultimately, our sustainable goal is to ensure that our activities would contribute towards a net positive impact on nature.

Precision and regenerative agriculture are part and parcel of our agricultural operations. These approaches together have helped to enhance and sustain soil health leading to improved crop yield. Healthy soils not only yield more food and nutrition, but also play a vital role in carbon sequestration and increased biodiversity, including a variety of soil organisms. Precision agriculture practices include the application of Geographical Information Systems (“GIS”) tracking to pinpoint areas requiring fertiliser with greater precision, increasing the efficiency of fertiliser application in our operating units. While precision agriculture has optimised yields in our operations, pairing it with regenerative agriculture and optimal agrochemical management drives our efforts to more sustainable practices and reduces the negative environmental effect to our soil and crop health. IOI’s regenerative agriculture practices also emphasise circularity and waste reduction through the land application of POME and EFB, recycling OPT and more.

IOI has been practising Integrated Pest Management in all our estates for over 10 years. It is an environmental-friendly method to control pests, rodents and plant diseases without the need for pesticides and other chemicals. This method is highly beneficial in both reducing operational greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and eliminating the release of pollutants into the soil and waterways.

Beneficial plants such as Cassia Cobanensis and Antigonon Leptopus are planted to attract natural predators for the biological control of bagworms and other leaf-eating caterpillars which are major pests in oil palm plantations. Barn owls have been proven effective in controlling rat population in our estates as the rodent population has been reduced by over 50%.

Other sustainable practices currently in place are:

  • Developing high-yielding oil palm clones to further boost the productivity of the estates.
  • Growing leguminous species as cover crop to prevent soil erosion, enhance soil nutrient status and improve soil water retention.
  • Practicing crop diversification with the cultivation of bananas, pineapples, durians and coconuts as part of our regenerative agriculture practice.
  • Recycling palm biomass (pruned fronds, empty fruit bunches and old palm trunks) and treated palm oil mill effluent back to the soil as natural fertilisers.
  • Designate non-chemical buffer zones around water bodies as an additional measure to prevent fertiliser leaching into waterways.
  • Biogas from methane capture plants at our mills are used as renewable fuel to replace fossil fuels as a source of energy, contributing to the reduction of GHG emissions.