Driving change from within
As a certified oil palm farmer and an extension agent for Wild Asia Group Scheme (WAGS), Virgilius Intang plays a pivotal role in growing the farmer networks in his community.
As Wild Asia’s extension agent, Virgilius reaches out to oil palm farmers in rural communities to offer information and advice on better farm management and certification standards. At times, he has to travel by boat to access farms that are tucked in the remote interiors of Sabah.
Sometimes being in the right place at the right time can shape a trajectory of one’s life. Virgilius Intang’s story is a case in point.
In 2014, Virgilius and his young family moved back to his wife’s village, Kg Toniting, a settlement in the Beluran District of Sabah. Originally from Kg Kuala Sapi, another village about 40 km away, Virgilius had just bought a piece of land in nearby Telupid using his hard-earned savings from working at an estate oil palm nursery.
“I had just quit my job at the nursery because it was too far to commute. I planned to clear the land and cultivate oil palm,” recalls Virgilius, as we chatted over steaming cups of Sabah tea in his spacious kitchen. “But I needed a regular income because it would take a few years before I could reap the first harvest.”
Born in a family of nine children, Virgilius couldn’t continue his tertiary education due to his family’s financial struggles. His father worked at a logging concession. But the logging industry in Sabah was winding down in the early 1990s. Plots of land for agricultural purposes were doled out to ex-workers like Virgilius’s father, who started planting oil palm.
After high school, Virgilius couldn’t find steady employment for five years and did odd jobs to survive. He ventured to bigger towns for employment but the stints were short-lived because he couldn’t land a gratifying job.
“I like the kind of job where I can see the fruit of my labour, like planting oil palm,” explains Virgilius, a Kadazandusun – Sabah’s largest indigenous group, and ethnic Labuk, a subgroup of Kadazan.
When he returned to Toniting, things sort of fell into place.
Wild Asia and Toniting
A small settlement established in the early 1990s, Toniting is an idyllic village with a population of 487. Nearly two thirds of the families here are involved in oil palm, either working for nearby mills or estates, or running their own smallholdings.
In 2013, Toniting made the national headlines when 42 local farmers under Wild Asia Group Scheme (WAGS) became the first independent smallholder group in Malaysia to be certified under the RSPO Group Certification Standard, and one of only a handful of RSPO-certified groups in the world then.
Unlike their “scheme” smallholder counterparts such as Felda (Federal Land Development Authority) farmers, independent farmers (those who farm under 40-ha sized land), receive limited or no training, funding and technical support. Older generation farmers like Virgilius’s dad just improvised as they went or learned from their peers.
Under the pilot WAGS project which began in 2012, Wild Asia provided technical advice, training and capacity building to the Toniting farmers to help them meet certification standards and to be included in the palm oil value chain.
When word got around that WAGS was expanding and Wild Asia was looking for field assistants to collect data, Virgilius jumped at the opportunity.
“It was ideal because I can be based in Toniting and work on my land, whilst working with and learning from Wild Asia,” says Virgilius, who didn’t mind the entry-level wage.
“Secondly, I can connect easily with the villagers because I’m one of them. I speak the same bahasa kampung (local lingo), I can listen to their concerns and share opinions.”
“I can connect easily with the villagers because I’m one of them. I speak the same bahasa kampung (local lingo), I can listen to their concerns and share opinions.”
Walking the talk
As a newly appointed staff, Virgilius took to WAGS training like duck to water. He picked up the basics of better farm management like keeping records of yields and production costs and switching from blanket spraying to circle spray, and controlling weeds manually to reduce chemical inputs. He uses empty fruit bunches (EFB) and decanter cake, provided free by nearby mills, to supplement chemical fertiliser and learned to stack fronds ‘correctly’ to ensure nutrients from organic wastes are channeled back to the soil.
“I applied everything I learned from Wild Asia to my own farm. My trees are healthy and my yields and profits increased,” he recalls. Virgilius received his MSPO (Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil) certification in 2016 and RSPO certification the following year.
Soft-spoken with warm, smiling eyes, Virgilius speaks slowly and deliberately, and is very approachable. Naturally, some farmers sought him out for advice although his main job in the early years was to collect and maintain data.
“Some farmers who joined the WAGS workshops didn’t fully grasp the training. So when I bumped into them in the village, I could break it down (the training) to them in bahasa kampung,” says Virgilius. “When I’m in the field, I’m learning from other farmers’ trials and errors too. It’s a mutual exchange.”
Transition to next-level farming
Virgilius found a wider scope to harness his potential with WA’s WAGS BIO initiative – a farming approach that adopts chemical-free and regenerative practices. Joining WAGS BIO in 2020, he carved out one acre, out of 5.9 acres (2.4ha) of his oil palm farm, as a BIO plot.
He learned to whip up DIY enzyme fertilisers from kitchen wastes, intercrop oil palm with ginger, make biochar from palm wastes and grow mushrooms for supplemental income.
“Although I shared the abundant ginger and mushroom harvests with families and friends, I still managed to reap a MYR1,000-profit from the surplus sold at the local tamu (weekly market),” Virgilius grins. “I’m now more ‘sensitive’ about the overuse of chemical fertiliser and pesticide. And the importance of caring for the soil,” he adds.
More significantly, Virgilius thinks the skills that farmers gained from the BIO programme can help them foster resilience and not depend solely on oil palm for livelihood.
“I want our farmers to also understand that caring for the environment is our foremost priority. We’re not going to be here forever,” says the father of an 18-year-old daughter.
“Our children and the next generation will take over the farms. We need to do this for them.”
Through WAGS BIO programme, Virgilius learned to convert organic wastes into BIO enzyme fertiliser to stimulate healthy soils. In this photo, he uses “BIO Juice,” made from kitchen wastes like vegetable and fruit peels which underwent a fermentation process, dilute the enzyme fertilizer with water and spray the liquid fertiliser on his farm. Healthy soils equal healthy trees and crops!
Moving ahead
Within nine years, Virgilius rose through the ranks. He now leads the WAGS Regional Support unit in Beluran and oversees 410 WAGS members in the area with his team. Currently, there are nearly 1,000 WAGS members spread across 11 districts in Sabah.
On top of expanding the farmer networks, Virgilius has also widened his social circle. He’s on a first-name basis with fellow farmers and gets frequent invitations to weddings and festive celebrations. An active church member, Virgilius plays keyboard for his church band, yet another place where he often bumps into WAGS farmers.
“I know the WAGS training manual like the back of my hand. Each time an issue comes up, I know how to find the solutions. Mantap sudah!” Virgilus smiles sheepishly. “Working at Wild Asia helps broaden my mindset and perspective.”
With the added responsibilities, Virgilius has to grapple with the day-to-day challenges too. He has to figure out how to rope in more WAGS farmers, raise more awareness about sustainable farming and keep up with piles of paperwork required for farmer certifications.
“I’m proud to be part of an organisation that facilitates and grows my community, and helps me be the best version of myself.”
“Sometimes 80 farmers showed up for the Intro to WAGS workshop but only 50 will actually sign up because they either don’t have the proper records or land titles, or other reasons,” he elaborates. “Also, I don’t have as much time to work on my farm as I would love to! I don’t trust hired farm hands because they do shoddy work.
Admittedly, natural farming requires a lot of manual labour like using a grass cutter to manage weeds or making compost to nourish the soil. But the 49-year-old likes being a hands-on farmer. He recently planted 145 pineapple bushes on a lot next to his oil palm trees. It’s all about managing his workload and taking it one step at a time, he added.
Today, Virgilius’s average income from oil palm nearly doubles his full-time salary. He also owns a contractor license to do renovation works. Yet the thought of quitting or switching jobs has never crossed his mind.
“It has taken me so long to build the trust and nurture the relationships with the local farmers. This job allows me to give back to my community and provides a sense of gratification that money can’t buy,” says Virgilius, who loves the camaraderie with his colleagues, and appreciates the mutual support and encouragement.
“I’m proud to be part of an organisation that facilitates and grows my community, and helps me be the best version of myself.”