1 - Organic durian farming in Malaysia

Global demand for durian has increase by 400% year-on-year according to HSBC, with the vast demand coming from China which imported USD4 bill worth of durian in 2022. While Thailand has dominated the China market thus far, China has also signed agreements with Malaysia (2019), Vietnam (2022) and Philippines (2023) to supply it with more durians. In August 2023, President Jokowi courted Chinese investment to open up 5,000 hectares in Indonesia for durian plantation. The attempt to meet the Chinese demand for musang king has meant scaling up durian production from 3-acre orchards to 10,000 acre plantations in Malaysia. This has led to deforestation, which reduces the biodiversity of the rainforest, threatens wildlife habitat and displaces Orang Asli (the indigenous people of Peninsula Malaysia), thus resulting in increasing incidents of wildlife-human conflict. Clearcutting hectarages of forest has also brought about erosion, and flash floods during heavy rains. In light of such developments, this paper asks if going organic is the answer to a more sustainable model of durian production. It focuses on interviews with a range of organic farmers to understand their motivations and how they balance matters of care with economics. How do they manage their relationships to the human and more-than-human (durian trees, soil, worms, pollinators, pests, fertilizing agents)? Are there differences in the discourse and practice of durian care and orchard management compared with the discourse disseminated by plantations? This paper employs a mixed-methods approach, combining interviews with discourse analysis of websites and news articles.