SOS Sumatra reconciling orangutan habitat with regenerative palm oil.
Can palm oil, the crop most associated with rainforest destruction, instead help reconnect a fragmented forest? A feasibility study for the Sumatran Orangutan Society put the question to the test across three smallholder villages in West Toba, Sumatra, asking whether oil palm could be reworked into wildlife-friendly agroforestry that rebuilds orangutan habitat while improving the livelihoods of the farmers who grow it.
Under the Terra Genesis banner, we worked as the regenerative-development partner alongside SOS Sumatra, local field partners, and a market partner to assess what a credible regenerative palm oil pilot would need to hold together: habitat, farmer livelihoods, soil health, crop diversification, supply-chain traceability, buyer participation, compliance demands, and commercial feasibility. The result was not a simple affirmation of the vision, but a conditional pathway: what would need to be true for it to work.
The crop fragmenting the forest, asked to help rebuild it.
West Toba is part of a biodiversity corridor linking protected forests where orangutans, tigers, gibbons, and other endangered species need connected habitat to move and survive. That corridor is being cut apart by road construction and smallholder oil palm expansion into forest.
The farmers are not the villains of this story. Many are working with poor soils, low yields, reduced fertilizer support, and few reliable income options. Palm is one of the crops that pays. Conventional palm monoculture can become a biodiversity desert, but for these communities it is also a livelihood.
SOS Sumatra wanted to test a genuinely counterintuitive possibility: rather than treating palm only as a threat, could smallholder oil palm be transitioned into wildlife-friendly agroforestry that improves farmer livelihoods while helping stitch fragmented forest back into a contiguous wildlife corridor?
The question was not whether the idea was compelling. It was whether it was feasible: ecologically, socially, commercially, and in terms of supply-chain credibility. The study needed to clarify what a pilot would actually require, from soil health and farmer engagement to chain of custody, buyer participation, compliance, and finance.
Read the whole system, then test whether it could hold together.
Under the Terra Genesis banner, we worked as the regenerative-development partner alongside the conservation lead, local field partner, and market partner pathway to assess the regenerative potential, supply-system requirements, stakeholder dynamics, and pilot logic behind a proposed wildlife-friendly palm oil model.
Context assessment
Built a grounded reading of the West Toba landscape, its geology, soils, climate risks, rainforest ecosystem, wildlife, village realities, farming systems, and the forces fragmenting the corridor.
Stakeholder mapping
Mapped the project’s stakeholders, including farmers, communities, village to provincial officials, conservation partners, mills, buyers, and investors, identifying which relationships needed to be developed.
Supply-system and compliance assessment
Assessed the smallholder palm supply chain, chain-of-custody options, traceability requirements, certification pathways, and emerging compliance demands, including EUDR.
Regenerative agroforestry model
Defined a tiered transition pathway beginning with organic management, soil health, existing palm productivity, and crop diversification before moving toward more ambitious wildlife-friendly agroforestry outcomes.
Finance and market strategy
Set out a finance logic combining premiums, forward contracts, grants, insetting, buyer participation, and diversified-crop revenue to reduce dependence on grant funding alone.
Precedent benchmarking and pilot scoping
Benchmarked the model against regenerative palm precedents in Brazil, Ghana, and Sumatra, then translated the findings into a scoped proof-of-concept pilot with components, timeline, and supply-chain conditions.
The landscape, the model, and the pilot concept.
Selected material from the feasibility study, including the West Toba corridor and habitat context, palm oil production paradigms, regenerative agroforestry and crop-diversification logic, supply-system and chain-of-custody mapping, and the scoped pilot pathway.
A feasibility study that moved a vision to a costed proposition.
A single integrated study that gave SOS Sumatra and its partners what they needed to decide whether, and how, to take a pilot forward, from landscape and stakeholder logic to regenerative agroforestry, supply-chain credibility, finance, market pathways, and pilot scope.
Context and landscape assessment
A reading of the West Toba landscape, ecosystem, wildlife, communities, and corridor vision, identifying the constraints and opportunities any intervention would need to work within.
Stakeholder map
A mapping of the project’s stakeholders and key relationships requiring development, from farmers and village leaders to officials, mills, buyers, investors, and implementation partners.
Supply chain and compliance assessment
An end-to-end assessment of the palm supply chain, chain-of-custody options, EUDR and traceability requirements, and the farm-level MRV foundation needed for credible regenerative claims.
Regenerative agroforestry model
A context-specific model for transitioning smallholder palm into wildlife-friendly agroforestry, with a tiered pathway spanning soil health, organic management, crop diversification, and habitat value.
Finance and market strategy
An integrated finance approach combining premiums, forward contracts, grants, insetting, buyer participation, and diversified revenue, with a market-partner pathway for the proposed pilot.
Scoped pilot proposal
A proof-of-concept pilot defined in concrete terms, including area, components, timeline, supply-chain conditions, and precedent benchmarking against comparable regenerative palm projects.
A clear-eyed verdict, and a grounded way forward.
A conditional yes, with the conditions named.
The study found that the vision could be feasible, but only if the project started with a grounding phase focused on organic management, soil health, existing palm productivity, and crop diversification before moving toward more ambitious regenerative and wildlife-corridor outcomes.
A counterintuitive financial case.
The study surfaced that the villages’ very low existing yields are also an opportunity. The headroom means regenerative management and diversification could meaningfully lift farmer income while building habitat, making the proof-of-concept more plausible.
A costed pilot for funders and buyers.
By scoping a concrete proof-of-concept pilot with area, components, timeline, and supply-chain conditions, the study gave SOS something fundable to put in front of partners rather than only a concept.
A credibility path built in from the start.
By centering farm-level MRV, Identity Preserved chain of custody, traceability, and emerging compliance demands, the study clarified what would be needed for regenerative sourcing claims to be credible.
A finance picture beyond grant dependency.
The integrated finance approach showed how premiums, forward contracts, insetting, buyer participation, and diversified-crop revenue could combine into something more durable than grant funding alone.
Confidence grounded in precedent.
Benchmarking against regenerative palm precedents in Brazil, Ghana, and Sumatra gave the partners evidence that the approach could work, and a baseline to learn from as the pilot moved toward validation.
The most damaging systems are often where regeneration matters most.
It is easy to write palm oil off as irredeemable, and easy to romanticize the alternative. The harder, more useful work sits between those two: taking a system that has driven habitat loss and testing, honestly, whether it can be turned toward the opposite, reconnecting forest, supporting wildlife, and still paying the farmers who depend on it.
That test only means something if it looks at everything at once: the ecology, the supply chain, the compliance regime, the buyer logic, the farmer economics, and the practical conditions for implementation. Doing that honest, integrated work first is what separates a real path to regeneration from good intentions that fall apart on contact with the ground.
SOS Sumatra was not a case of claiming that palm oil had become regenerative. It was a feasibility study asking what would need to be true for a regenerative palm oil pilot to be credible, traceable, wildlife-supporting, and commercially viable.
The study brought together conservation logic, smallholder realities, soil health, crop diversification, supply-chain assessment, chain-of-custody requirements, buyer needs, finance logic, and regenerative development strategy, creating a clearer basis for deciding whether and how a pilot could move forward.
Start with whether it is actually feasible.
Start with one hard question about a supply system or a landscape, and find out what it would really take. We assess the ecology, supply chain, compliance demands, economics, and implementation realities together, so you can decide with clear eyes and move with a grounded plan.