The units of oil palm production by Tuomas Tammisto

In late 2025 the plantation operations of a Malaysian oil palm company operating in East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea, were halted for three months by a court order. Behind the "lockdown" of the plantation and the court case was a long-standing disagreement between the oil palm company on the one hand, and customary landowners, blockholders and estate owners on the other, over the royalties paid by the company. At the same time, plantation workers are discontent not only about pay levels, but wage cycles and the ways of calculating their wages.

In this presentation, I discuss these struggles over oil palm production and the distribution of profit. What I am especially interested in are the struggles over calculation, measuring and the very concrete units, such as "fresh fruit bunch", "loose fruit" and "tonne", on which these struggles are based.