Abstract
A social economic survey on sago palm related activities was carried out at Tebing Tinggi Island
of the Riau Province, Indonesia. The area of sago palm cultivation and the number of sago processing
factories increased steadily from 1990 to 1998, to 27,715 hectares and 60,342 tons/yr respectively. The average size of each smallholder garden is about 11 hectares. Sago palms in these gardens take 12 years to attain maturity and about 26 palms are harvested per hectare per year. In eighty-six percent of the surveyed gardens, sago palms were sold a few years prior to palm maturity, under a unique system known locally as the ‘pajak’ or ‘advancing selling’. Harvesting is normally carried out by contract, with all the harvesting costs borne by the buyers or the owners of processing factories. On average, the costs of harvesting and transportation to factory are about 21,000 Rupiah (US$ 2.8) per palm. In almost all the processing factories, untreated water is used for processing. Sago piths are rasped with nail studded rotating drum driven by diesel engine. The rasped pith is collected in a water-containing tank equipped with a mechanised stirrer. Starch is released by vigorous stirring and the extracted starch is recovered by filtration and sedimentation. The monthly starch production capacity of each factory range from 56 to 350 tons and the starch is sun-dried before exporting to Cirebon in Java.
