Abstract
Rural farmers in Maluku, Eastern Indonesia, depend heavily on sago palm. They are also involved in sifting cultivation, whose main crops are vegetatively propagated crops such as taro, sweet potato, and banana, as supplementary foods. Moluccan indigenous agriculture, as referred to in this paper, consists of sago palm cultivation and vegeculture or “sago-based vegeculture.
The objective of this paper is to examine the effect of sago-based vegeculture on the local forest landscape by analyzing the productivity of sago groves and the size of cultivated land devoted to vegeculture in Maluku.
Based on field research carried out in a mountain village of central Seram Island, the following research findings were obtained. (1) The productivity of sago groves in the village was estimated to be 353.6-530.4 × 10 4kcal ha -1 year-1. This figure, which is 6 to 17 times that for upland rice fields in Kalimantan, suggests that the demand for agricultural land for sago palm is relatively small. (2) Against the background of the high dependency of the region on sago starch (the energy gained from sago starch was more than 70% of the total energy derived from staple foods), the size of cultivated land devoted to vegeculture is only 0.22ha per household; this figure is quite small in comparison to 1.4-1.8ha per household, which is the average size of millet and upland rice fields in Asia.
The research findings reported above indicate that sago-based vegeculture, to some extent, contributes toward the preservation of natural forest of Maluku. Sago-based vegeculture appears to have effect on the local patterns of forest resources, such as the hunting of Cuscus (an arboreal marsupial inhabiting the primary forest and mature secondary forests).
https://ror.org/02sxnp368 
