In April, two very different public figures made declarations that reignited fevered discussion of Indonesia's oil palm issue. First, fresh from accepting an Oscar for best actor, Leonardo DiCaprio posted a blog ning the management of Sumatra's forests. Shortly afterwards, the country's president, Joko Widodo, revealed plans for a moratorium on new oil palm concessions This comes after an estimated one million hectares of went up in flames last year. This was partly due to the clearance and forests for palm plantations, and produced acrid smoke, a urge in carbon emissions and cost Indonesia more than the 2004 tsunami o understand the drivers of this issue, we need to grasp the long-term rise of a booming g commodity: palm oil. response to growing global demand, o the past 20 years Indonesia and Malaysia converted nearly 2m hectares of land oil This is the biggest and fastest rural either country has seen. And nearly of this expansion involved some form forest destruction. This rapid landscape change also had untold effects on remote rural hamlets across he region ndonesia and Malaysia have emerged as the world's top producers palm sharing 84% The boom has witnessed the rapid rise in the wealth and the power large state-owned and private agribusiness corporations. In 1961, US President Dwight Eisenhower pointed to "the total influence of a vast arms industry which he famously called the m ary-industrial complex. He argued that the complex had undue fluence on US policy, Making use of for the most part, Indonesian land and labour, Indonesian and Malaysian companies have created a comparable transnational oil palm 'complex puts profits well ahead of people or planet. In the shadow of this complex, we can identify three major trends First, oil palm companies have lobbied the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia to ensure a ready supply of low wage migrant labour and to make available vast swathes of low-cost land. Investors have opened up new lands for plantations, often overriding the interests of customary rights holders, making land conflicts common. Both countries have shifted toward a corporate model of plantation agriculture. In Malaysia, the Federal Land Development Authority, originally established to settle landless farmers, now operates of the world's largest plantation companies. It is indistinguishable from other global giants such as Sime Darby, and both are closely linked to the ruling party Indonesian policy previously mandated nucleus estate schemes that left 70% of the land in the h smallholders, who received inputs and advice from the central plantation. Policy now favours "partnership' schemes, which leave landholders with a paltry and insecure 20% shareholding in plantation and often no role other than as plantation workers.