Ruminant Livestock as a Solution for Logging Need (Tebang Butuh) in Community Forests

On average, community forest farmers only have narrow land for their forestry timber plantations, this makes it difficult for those who rely on forestry wood for their daily lives. Forest wood plants have a long cycle even for certain plant species up to decades. When there is an urgent need, for example a child wants to go to school, his child's marriage, and so on, the wood plant is cut down even though it is not yet time, which is commonly known as logging need (tebang butuh). Apart from that, the quality of the logs produced is also low, including the selling price as well as the quantity/productivity. The forestry industry with its installed capacity requires a large supply of logs of standard quality. The practice of logging needs (tebang butuh) to be avoided or minimized as much as possible so that optimal benefits will be felt by all parties, both community forest farmers and the forest industries.

To overcome the problems of daily life or urgent needs, ruminant husbandry can be the solution. The land around the main tree can be used as a place for grazing and legumes as a hedge as a source of forage. When the main tree such as albasia is still young, a number of plants such as vegetables and herbs (empon-empon) can still be planted and give good results. But when the main tree is big enough, the plant cannot tolerate shade, so its cultivation not effective even be a loss. Legumes such as calliandra, gliricidia and indigofera can be planted as a source of feed for ruminants (sheep, goats, cows or buffalo).

The ruminant's breeding cycle is faster than that of the forest trees. Types of livestock business that can be done such as breeding, meat production (fattening), milk production (milking) and even trading. Although export opportunities are open, especially sheep and goats, the domestic market is also large. For example, Yogyakarta needs up to 4000 sheep per month, especially for the cluster of satay stalls on Jalan Imogiri Timur, Yogyakarta Special Province. Not to mention the markets in Greater Jakarta and aqiqah. As for beef, Indonesia is also still lacking, which is currently supplied with buffalo meat from India, which accounts for nearly 60% of national needs. Farms like this can be a surefire solution to the problem of logging need (tebang butuh) that hinders the development of community forests at this time. The area of community forest also cannot be underestimated, even in some areas the area of community forest is larger than state forest. Nationally, Indonesian people's forests are estimated at 35 million hectares, while state forests reach 128 million hectares.

Biochar and Land Reclamation of Ex-Coal Mines

Reclamation of ex-coal mining land is the obligation of the mining company, but often this is not done properly for various reasons. These are mainly due to weak rule enforcement and light sanctions. With the area of ex-coal mines that has reached millions of hectares and the reclamation efforts are needed, but the realization in the field is still very minimal, making environmental damage even greater. The thing that can encourage efforts to improve the ex-coal mining land is the profit or economic factor that can be obtained. This means that if the reclamation effort also bring economic benefits - in addition to environmental benefits, of course - then the coal companies will also be happy to do so. So what activity is it?

The photo is taken from here

After the coal deposit is taken, the top soil should be returned to the land. The basic thing that needs to be done is to improve the quality of the soil so that it can be used for planting various crops. By improving soil quality, besides soil fertility can be restored and even increased, it also includes isolating (immobilizing) a number of harmful elements from the ex-coal mining land. Creating a profitable and sustainable business activity is the next step. The improved soil can then be planted and legumes are the best choice, this is because legumes are other than pioneer plant types with high survivability, strong and deep roots that prevent erosion, root nodules from azetobacter symbiosis by binding nitrogen from the atmosphere which fertilizes the soil also provides many other benefits. Ruminant husbandry is a profitable and sustainable business activity, because it mainly utilizes the leaves of the legume plant as a source of feed. The livestock manure can also be used to further improve the health and quality of the soil so that soil fertility continues to increase and is maintained. The wood from the legume plantation can also be used for productions namely briquettes, charcoal briquettes and even wood pellets.

As a basic thing and the entry point for the above business is improving the quality of the land or soil of the ex-coal mines. There are a number of ways to do this, but the use of biochar is one of the best options. With biochar not only increases the pH or acidity of the soil so that many nutrients will be absorbed by plants better and soil microbial activity to decompose organic matter is more active, but it is also able to absorb a number of harmful chemical elements in the soil, increasing soil organic carbon that can last hundreds of years and also absorbs the greenhouse gase from atmosphere. The biochar can be made from a number of agricultural, forestry and agro-industrial wastes, such as wood chips from logging or from palm oil mill waste such as empty fruit bunches and fiber. A number of areas in Kalimantan are not only rich in coal deposits and also currently many of these ex-coal mining lands are abandoned, as well as a lot of biomass materials such as forest waste and palm oil mill waste for the production of biochar.

In order to reduce CO2 emissions in the atmosphere, biochar is also able to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere (carbon sequestration) and is a carbon negative scenario. The biochar applied to the soil is a carbon sink, as an option for carbon credit other than carbon offset. In the current era of decarbonization, efforts to reduce CO2 level in the atmosphere are important. In Indonesia, where there is still a lot of forest land, carbon credit can be obtained from the absorption of CO2 by the trees in the forest, so that the forest acts as a carbon sink as well. But in other countries where the use of fossil energy is very large or massive, they must reduce the adverse climate impacts caused by burning fossil energy materials, especially coal. They can buy carbon credits on this biochar application.

 

Coal is the most widely used fossil energy for power generation in the world today and Indonesia is one of the producers of such coal. Although in the near future the use of coal will be reduced and in some countries it will be stopped altogether, but the negative impacts of coal mining are still many, damaging and even endangering the environment. This is an urgency to improve the land or ex-coal mining land which is estimated to reach 8 million hectares in Indonesia. On the one hand, coal power plants can buy carbon credits for biochar applications like the scheme above. Palm oil mills on the other hand also produce a lot of solid waste, especially empty fruit bunches (EFB) that can be used for the production of biochar. These big companies could collaborate to solve climate problems due to the increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. To this day, it is reported from the Mauna loa observatory, in Hawaii, United States that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has exceeded 400 ppm or there is still an increase of about 2 ppm every year, even though the global target is to decrease the concentration to only 350 ppm.

Calophyllum Inophyllum Plantation Don't Lose With Palm Oil Plantation

Calophyllum inophyllum has high commercial value wood. Forests in Indonesia contain around 4000 species of trees, with 267 of them being traded. Wood from trees of the family Dipterocarpaceae is the most important group such as meranti, keruing, kapur and mersawa. In addition, a number of tree species are also quite important, namely koompasia, palaquium, dyera, callophyllum inophyllum, octomeles sumatrana and gonystylus bancanus (ramin). Callophyllum inophyllum wood is rather light to medium and soft, but dense, wrinkled, to the point of not being able to split. Callophyllum inophyllum wood has two colors, namely gray or pseudo-yellow and brick red with finer veins and straighter fibers. Callophyllum inophyllum wood is classified as durable class II and very durable in sea water. Callophyllum inophyllum wood including commercial wood is often used as boards, beams, poles, flooring, boats, canoes, crates and tables, shipbuilding, railway sleepers, household furniture and so on. Fishing communities on the coast usually use the wood to make boats.

Until now, the potential for callophyllum inophyllum in Indonesia is still not known with certainty, but from the interpretation of Landsat7 ETM satellite imagery in 2003 on all coasts in Indonesia it is estimated that the natural stands of callophyllum inophyllum reach a total area of 480,000 hectares and most of it (about 60%) is in forest areas. Callophyllum inophyllum stands generally grow in mixed forest types, in natural forests with types of ketapang, malapari, waru laut, keben, pandan laut and others. While in planted forests, callophyllum inophyllum grows with acacia, mahogany, eucalyptus, melinjo, jackfruit, duku, durian and others. Callophyllum inophyllum grows closest at a position of 50-1000 meters from the shoreline with very variable tree densities. Nyamplung tree height can reach 25 meters and a trunk diameter of 1.5 meters.

Calophyllum inophyllum oil production, especially for biofuel production, can be done while waiting for wood production. This biofuel production has even become the main activity of this callophyllum inophyllum cultivation because it can be done for decades until finally the productivity of plants decreases, trees are cut down and replaced by new plants. The yield of calophyllum inophyllum oil, which is almost the same as crude palm oil or CPO, which is 5 tons/hectare and does not compete with edible oil, makes calophyllum inophyllum oil very potential to be developed. Biodiesel from calophyllum inophyllum oil also provides an answer to the failure of the jatropha biodiesel program some time ago, for more details read here. With Indonesia's coastline reaching 99,093 km, the production of biofuel from calophyllum inophyllum will be very large as will wood and its processed products. If we compare it with palm oil plantation, when their productive period is over, logging and utilization of palm oil trunks cause many problems, even many are just left in the plantation. Leaving oil palm trunks in the plantation until they are rotten turns out to also cause its own problems, namely as a place for growing larvae that damage coconut trees, read in more detail here. This is of course very different from the calophyllum inophyllum tree, which when the tree is old, the quality of the wood gets better, as well as the selling price. 

In addition, various agroforestry practices can be carried out on the calophyllum inophyllum plantation because it can be mixed-culture and other functions as wind breaker so that other plants will also be protected. The practice of mixed plantation or mixed culture can hardly be done on palm oil plantations so that the output is only one kind, namely fresh fruit bunches (FFB). Meanwhile, with mixed plantations, the output can also vary from food crops such as fruits, tubers and so on. The maintenance costs, especially fertilization, are also very large in palm oil plantations and this is the highest cost component in palm oil plantation operations. To continue to maintain its level of performance, of course, the need for fertilizer for oil palm plantations is very large, while in calophyllum inophyllum plantations it is smaller. The need for water for palm oil plantations is also very large, while in calophyllum inophyllum plantations it can even remain productive on dry soils. 

Of course all efforts depend on the goals to be achieved. Likewise with this calophyllum inophyllum cultivation. In addition to having many advantages compared to palm oil plantations as described above, the calophyllum inophyllum tree also has a number of advantages compared to other wood-producing trees. For wood-producing trees, such as teak, it takes a minimum of 20 years and during that time there is almost no income, so it is economically difficult. While in calophyllum inophyllum seeds are produced throughout the year as the raw material for the biofuel. Palm oil plantations are currently estimated to have reached around 15 million hectares with one of the oil being allocated for biofuel or especially biodiesel, so that if the calophyllum inophyllum plantation is developed, all biodiesel from calophyllum inophyllum oil can be made so that the palm oil plantation does not need to be expanded anymore. The existing calophyllum inophyllum plantations were developed and intensified so that they were sufficient for the required biodiesel production. In addition, the need for wood for various purposes can also be met from the calophyllum inophyllum plantation.

The Failure of Jatropha Biodiesel and the Opportunity of Calophyllum

Experience is the best teacher as the saying goes. And this also applies to biofuels. Don't let failures in the past happen again, because only fools fall into the same hole twice. The production of biodiesel from Jatropha (jatropha curcas) has been widely campaigned to become a national trending topic at that time, but in fact biodiesel from Jatropha is not economical or is still too expensive so the program stops automatically. One of these factors is the low oil yield from Jatropha seeds which is only around 25%, while calophyllum (Calophyllum inophyllum L) reaches an average of 50%. Moreover, the average productivity per hectare of Jatropha curcas is on average less than 10 tons/hectare, while calophyllum averages 10 tons/hectare. With the 50% yield with a productivity per hectare of more than 10 tons/hectare, the resulting calophyllum oil 5 tons of oil per hectare is more or less the same as crude palm oil CPO, making it more economical to produce. With a yield of about 25% with an average productivity of 20 tons/hectare of fresh fruit bunches (FFB), 5 tons of CPO will be produced, the same as calophyllum. Whereas palm oil is also the largest vegetable oil producing plant, so calophyllum oil is also not far from this condition.

 

Biofuel and especially biofuel from vegetable oils are classified as carbon neutral fuels, because they come from plants as a product of photosynthesis that requires CO2, so when burned it will also return the same amount of CO2 to the atmosphere. The use of carbon neutral fuels is very beneficial for the earth's atmosphere, thereby increasing greenhouse gases that increase the earth's temperature. Judging from the oil composition between jatropha oil, calophyllum oil and palm oil, it is also almost the same as the table above. Indeed, the two sources of biodiesel, both Jatropha and calophyllum, will both be carbon neutral fuels or more correctly carbon neutral liquid fuels, but the economic factor will ultimately determine the commercial production. Meanwhile, from the carbon neutral solid fuel group, we can find for example in wood chips, wood pellets, and palm kernel shells (PKS).

The advantages of calophyllum specifically as biodiesel raw material are first, calophyllum oil does not compete with food oil, secondly, this calophyllum plant grows and spreads evenly naturally in Indonesia, regenerates easily, bears fruit throughout the year and shows high survival power to the environment including with high-salinity soils along the coast. Third, the plant are relatively easy to cultivate, either monoculture or mixed culture, this makes a number of agroforestry practices possible. In palm oil plantation this is very difficult to do, so that we find today almost all palm oil plantations are monoculture or plantation of similar plant. Fourth, almost all parts of the plant can be utilized and have economic value, and fifth, the calophyllum plant stand can be useful as a wind breaker and conservation along the coast. Under these conditions, the opportunity for the development of calophyllum for biofuel is getting bigger.