Standard of living of oil palm small holders in Beaufort, Sabah / Adrian Sylvester Molius ... [et al.]

The purpose of this research is to survey the standard of living of oil palm small holders in Beaufort, Sabah. Standard of living/quality of life is a broad perspective. Therefore, the scope of this research will only encompasses mainly on the earnings of the small holders and the few type of assets own by them. The need for the study arose as the government has been emphasizing agriculture sector to uplift the standard of living of the 'Rakyat' in particular those in rural areas. Malaysia is the largest producer of oil palm in the world with Sabah being the largest state's producer of oil palm with acreage of plantation of 1.65 million hectares as at year '2004. Therefore, being the state's largest producer of oil palm, we felt that there is a need to actually gauge the small holders standard of living as they are mainly comprises of people in the rural areas. Our research objective will outline the following :-

^ To determine the ethnicity of oil palm small holders in the district of Beaufort, Sabah.
^ Correlation between the acreage of plantation and income.
^ Correlation between the assets own (confined to details of assets owned as per sample questionnaire) and acreage of plantation.

This research project will involve only 133 respondents or approximately 1/3 out of the 398 oil palm small holders registered with Agriculture Department, Beaufort. We are unable to get all the small holders involved in this research due to lack of financial resources and time constraints.