Pearls from palms
Along the black peaty inlets around Mukah, a small town on Sarawak’s northern coast, a couple of stocky labourers, their backs glistening with sweat, are busy tying together 80-centimetre-long slices of sago palm trunk before leaving them to float like a raft on the river. Above the logs wafts the burnt-biscuit smell of roasting sago, accompanied by billowing smoke from a ramshackle sago bakehouse, a wooden shed raised up on stilts in the swampy ground. In a few days’ time, when the sago raft is long enough and the local mill ready for a new delivery, the logs will be dragged upstream for processing.
‘The labourers have bought the standing trees from the landowners,’ says Diana Rose, a local ethnic Melanau of aristocratic descent. ‘They then fell the trees and sell the logs to the mills. The difference between the mill price and the landowner’s price is their profit.’
In Mukah’s sago mills, the logs are cut lengthways and the pith extracted by machine before being turned into sago starch or flour for export and use in the local food processing industry. Some of the flour finds its way back to the village workshops, where local women cook the sago and bake crispy, wafer-thin biscuits.
‘We mix the flour with salt and water and a little rice bran,’ explains Rose as we crouch in a smoky bakehouse. She and her neighbours then put the mixture on a raffia mat and rapidly flap it back and forth until the paste forms small, round pellets – sago pearls – about the size of peas. Another woman then roasts the pellets on a large clay stove, rolling them with a whisk until they’re dry and brittle.
In and around Mukah, Melanau villagers have been harvesting the wild sago forests for generations as a staple crop and to supply a small export market with sago starch. But over the past 20 years, the industry has been undergoing a major transformation. Following the development of the first sago plantation in the 1980s, the area of sago forests has almost tripled as the government of Sarawak tries to transform this former subsistence crop into a significant agricultural product.
Renewable resource?
Indigenous to Southeast Asia, the true sago palm (Metroxylon sagu) has long been used on a subsistence basis in parts of Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, where the local tribes gather it from wild stands. Sago is one of humanity’s oldest food plants and thrives in waterlogged, acidic soils in which few other plants will grow. In peninsular Malaysia, most of the sago forests have been cleared in recent decades to make way for palm oil, but they persist in Sarawak, a state in northern Borneo, where some of the largest sago tracts are found in the region around Mukah.
Tropical agronomists have long considered sago to be an underused and neglected crop. If exploited in situ, it’s environmentally friendly, relatively sustainable and has been heralded as ‘the starch crop of the 21st century’ by Malaysian researchers. Unlike palm oil plantations, where the forest is cleared and drained before planting, sago forests are self-regenerating, and the industry is based on the exploitation of existing forests.
If managed correctly, large tracts of peat forest are left virtually intact during sago harvesting, which helps the forest to maintain its function as a carbon sink. ‘But sago palm can only be an environmentally friendly renewable resource if the trunks are processed in the field where they grow,’ says Dr Michiel Flach, sago expert and former professor of tropical crop science at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. ‘The moment one starts to take trunks from the field to process them elsewhere, there is a drain on the natural resources.’
Historically, Sarawak’s sago has been cultivated by smallholders and exploited as a sideline along with other agricultural activities or in parallel with a salaried job elsewhere. But there has also been a small export market for sago starch. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Sarawak became a British colony and experienced a sago boom. In his book The Oya Melanau, the late ethnographer Dr Stephen Morris wrote that a large part of the state’s production was bought by a firm in Britain, but when it was taken over in the early 1950s by a US company that had different suppliers, the demand for Sarawak sago almost vanished. Within five years, production slumped by three quarters.
It took decades for Sarawak to return to previous levels of sago production. Better-quality flour was in demand and, until recently, Sarawak’s industry was inefficient and wasteful. There were long delays between felling and extraction, thus reducing the usable starch content, and sago mills were frequently (and still are) run below capacity.
From food to fuel
Considerable improvements have been made in Sarawak’s sago industry over the past two decades as the state’s government seeks to convert it from a staple food to an energy crop. Since the 1990s, research has been encouraged, plantations expanded and production increased. From less than 20,000 hectares in 1991, total sago forests, including smallholdings and plantations, have grown to around 53,000 hectares today – an area roughly the size of the Isle of Man.
Sarawak’s government has high hopes for further expansion of the industry through state subsidies and the consolidation of smallholdings. Under the current plan, smallholders’ farms are to be rehabilitated and amalgamated to form clusters of about 500 hectares each, with improved infrastructure and management. Smallholders’ earnings are expected to increase substantially under the programme, as new saplings are planted among existing trees.
It is the first time in Malaysian history that the government has taken such a central role in promoting an agricultural product. During the colonial era, the rubber industry flourished through private initiatives, as does palm oil today.
Sago’s potential is clearly enormous. The palm yields more ethanol per hectare than any other biofuel crop grown today. And Japanese investors are apparently as confident of sago’s future as the Sarawak state government. The Necfer Corporation plans to build the world’s first demonstration plant to manufacture bioethanol from sago in Sarawak, after a study showed that an ethanol plant would be viable if at
least 50,000 hectares of sago forest were grown.
Sarawak’s pioneering efforts to increase sago production have drawn the attention of other small-scale producers. Indonesia started its first commercial sago plantation of 20,000 hectares during the late 1990s and expects its first sago harvest by the end of next year. Indeed, some researchers believe that the island of Sumatra, with its better-quality soils, has greater long-term potential for sago production than Sarawak.
But perhaps the most radical changes are likely to occur in Papua New Guinea, which has an estimated one million hectares of wild sago forests, most of it underexploited. According to Barney Rowgap, Papua New Guinea’s national sago industry coordinator, only about ten per cent of the country’s sago is harvested on a subsistence basis. Following Sarawak’s example, plans are in hand to increase the sago harvest and to build the country’s first sago-processing factory, which should go into production later this year.
Meanwhile, Sarawak hopes to maintain its reputation as the world’s leading sago producer. The state government plans to increase production from 15 logs per hectare to 70–100 logs over the next decade and is promoting sago as a potential source of ethanol for the booming Chinese market, as well as in the traditional markets of Japan, Taiwan and Singapore. According to Abdullah Chek Sahamat, general manager of Sarawak’s state-run Land Custody and Development Authority, by 2015, exports of sago are expected to increase more than sixfold.
Forest concerns
But how will further sago production affect the region’s already degraded forests? Will the attempts to scale up production encourage further loss of primary forest? Not at all, argues Dr Jong Foh-Shoon, a Malaysian sago specialist. ‘There is no need to clear primary forest as sago can be developed on already degraded lands and secondary forests,’ he says.
Others are not so sure. ‘The sago palm has a long way to go before it will be used on a large scale,’ says Biopact, a Brussels-based consultancy on biofuels and bioenergy, ‘but its cultivation would almost certainly involve deforestation and sustainability problems.’
The long-forgotten palm may well be set for further major expansion, but Flach adds a cautionary note: ‘Whether the plantations are a success, and whether the starch will be used for food products or for ethanol, still remains to be seen.’
The Melanau
The Melanau tribe is unusual in Sarawak as it’s one of the few groups whose staple food and source of carbohydrates is sago rather than rice. They represent less than six per cent of Sarawak’s population and are concentrated around the coastal town of Mukah. So important is sago to their cultural identity that during the early 18th century, the Melanau paid tribute to the Sultan of Brunei in sago and gold.
Melanau society is somewhat matriarchal: when property is divided after death, the sago bakehouses usually go to the daughters. In the past, like many other Sarawakians, the Melanau were animists and inhabited large communal houses along the coast. Most are now either Muslim or Christian and live in individual Malay-style wooden homes, often with a sago bakehouse attached, rather than communal dwellings.
They do, however, still retain some aspects of animism in their festivals and beliefs. Traditionally, the Melanau believed that illnesses were caused by supernatural spirits and were cured with herbal medicine or magic charms. If illness persisted, however, a craftsman was asked to carve an image, or blum, of the responsible spirit in sago pith. Water was then poured over the blum and the patient, who would be cured if the diagnosis was correct.
The Melanau produced a whole variety of sickness images, such as small coffins, guardian figures, boats, dragons and tall burial poles. One of the few existing burial totems – carved with a pot-shaped niche that contained the bones of a local dignitary or Melanau aristocrat – stands in the sago village of Tellian, one of the ancient centres of Melanau culture.
June 2010
‘The labourers have bought the standing trees from the landowners,’ says Diana Rose, a local ethnic Melanau of aristocratic descent. ‘They then fell the trees and sell the logs to the mills. The difference between the mill price and the landowner’s price is their profit.’
In Mukah’s sago mills, the logs are cut lengthways and the pith extracted by machine before being turned into sago starch or flour for export and use in the local food processing industry. Some of the flour finds its way back to the village workshops, where local women cook the sago and bake crispy, wafer-thin biscuits.
‘We mix the flour with salt and water and a little rice bran,’ explains Rose as we crouch in a smoky bakehouse. She and her neighbours then put the mixture on a raffia mat and rapidly flap it back and forth until the paste forms small, round pellets – sago pearls – about the size of peas. Another woman then roasts the pellets on a large clay stove, rolling them with a whisk until they’re dry and brittle.
In and around Mukah, Melanau villagers have been harvesting the wild sago forests for generations as a staple crop and to supply a small export market with sago starch. But over the past 20 years, the industry has been undergoing a major transformation. Following the development of the first sago plantation in the 1980s, the area of sago forests has almost tripled as the government of Sarawak tries to transform this former subsistence crop into a significant agricultural product.
Renewable resource?
Indigenous to Southeast Asia, the true sago palm (Metroxylon sagu) has long been used on a subsistence basis in parts of Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, where the local tribes gather it from wild stands. Sago is one of humanity’s oldest food plants and thrives in waterlogged, acidic soils in which few other plants will grow. In peninsular Malaysia, most of the sago forests have been cleared in recent decades to make way for palm oil, but they persist in Sarawak, a state in northern Borneo, where some of the largest sago tracts are found in the region around Mukah.
Tropical agronomists have long considered sago to be an underused and neglected crop. If exploited in situ, it’s environmentally friendly, relatively sustainable and has been heralded as ‘the starch crop of the 21st century’ by Malaysian researchers. Unlike palm oil plantations, where the forest is cleared and drained before planting, sago forests are self-regenerating, and the industry is based on the exploitation of existing forests.
If managed correctly, large tracts of peat forest are left virtually intact during sago harvesting, which helps the forest to maintain its function as a carbon sink. ‘But sago palm can only be an environmentally friendly renewable resource if the trunks are processed in the field where they grow,’ says Dr Michiel Flach, sago expert and former professor of tropical crop science at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. ‘The moment one starts to take trunks from the field to process them elsewhere, there is a drain on the natural resources.’
Historically, Sarawak’s sago has been cultivated by smallholders and exploited as a sideline along with other agricultural activities or in parallel with a salaried job elsewhere. But there has also been a small export market for sago starch. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Sarawak became a British colony and experienced a sago boom. In his book The Oya Melanau, the late ethnographer Dr Stephen Morris wrote that a large part of the state’s production was bought by a firm in Britain, but when it was taken over in the early 1950s by a US company that had different suppliers, the demand for Sarawak sago almost vanished. Within five years, production slumped by three quarters.
It took decades for Sarawak to return to previous levels of sago production. Better-quality flour was in demand and, until recently, Sarawak’s industry was inefficient and wasteful. There were long delays between felling and extraction, thus reducing the usable starch content, and sago mills were frequently (and still are) run below capacity.
From food to fuel
Considerable improvements have been made in Sarawak’s sago industry over the past two decades as the state’s government seeks to convert it from a staple food to an energy crop. Since the 1990s, research has been encouraged, plantations expanded and production increased. From less than 20,000 hectares in 1991, total sago forests, including smallholdings and plantations, have grown to around 53,000 hectares today – an area roughly the size of the Isle of Man.
Sarawak’s government has high hopes for further expansion of the industry through state subsidies and the consolidation of smallholdings. Under the current plan, smallholders’ farms are to be rehabilitated and amalgamated to form clusters of about 500 hectares each, with improved infrastructure and management. Smallholders’ earnings are expected to increase substantially under the programme, as new saplings are planted among existing trees.
It is the first time in Malaysian history that the government has taken such a central role in promoting an agricultural product. During the colonial era, the rubber industry flourished through private initiatives, as does palm oil today.
Sago’s potential is clearly enormous. The palm yields more ethanol per hectare than any other biofuel crop grown today. And Japanese investors are apparently as confident of sago’s future as the Sarawak state government. The Necfer Corporation plans to build the world’s first demonstration plant to manufacture bioethanol from sago in Sarawak, after a study showed that an ethanol plant would be viable if at
least 50,000 hectares of sago forest were grown.
Sarawak’s pioneering efforts to increase sago production have drawn the attention of other small-scale producers. Indonesia started its first commercial sago plantation of 20,000 hectares during the late 1990s and expects its first sago harvest by the end of next year. Indeed, some researchers believe that the island of Sumatra, with its better-quality soils, has greater long-term potential for sago production than Sarawak.
But perhaps the most radical changes are likely to occur in Papua New Guinea, which has an estimated one million hectares of wild sago forests, most of it underexploited. According to Barney Rowgap, Papua New Guinea’s national sago industry coordinator, only about ten per cent of the country’s sago is harvested on a subsistence basis. Following Sarawak’s example, plans are in hand to increase the sago harvest and to build the country’s first sago-processing factory, which should go into production later this year.
Meanwhile, Sarawak hopes to maintain its reputation as the world’s leading sago producer. The state government plans to increase production from 15 logs per hectare to 70–100 logs over the next decade and is promoting sago as a potential source of ethanol for the booming Chinese market, as well as in the traditional markets of Japan, Taiwan and Singapore. According to Abdullah Chek Sahamat, general manager of Sarawak’s state-run Land Custody and Development Authority, by 2015, exports of sago are expected to increase more than sixfold.
Forest concerns
But how will further sago production affect the region’s already degraded forests? Will the attempts to scale up production encourage further loss of primary forest? Not at all, argues Dr Jong Foh-Shoon, a Malaysian sago specialist. ‘There is no need to clear primary forest as sago can be developed on already degraded lands and secondary forests,’ he says.
Others are not so sure. ‘The sago palm has a long way to go before it will be used on a large scale,’ says Biopact, a Brussels-based consultancy on biofuels and bioenergy, ‘but its cultivation would almost certainly involve deforestation and sustainability problems.’
The long-forgotten palm may well be set for further major expansion, but Flach adds a cautionary note: ‘Whether the plantations are a success, and whether the starch will be used for food products or for ethanol, still remains to be seen.’
The Melanau
The Melanau tribe is unusual in Sarawak as it’s one of the few groups whose staple food and source of carbohydrates is sago rather than rice. They represent less than six per cent of Sarawak’s population and are concentrated around the coastal town of Mukah. So important is sago to their cultural identity that during the early 18th century, the Melanau paid tribute to the Sultan of Brunei in sago and gold.
Melanau society is somewhat matriarchal: when property is divided after death, the sago bakehouses usually go to the daughters. In the past, like many other Sarawakians, the Melanau were animists and inhabited large communal houses along the coast. Most are now either Muslim or Christian and live in individual Malay-style wooden homes, often with a sago bakehouse attached, rather than communal dwellings.
They do, however, still retain some aspects of animism in their festivals and beliefs. Traditionally, the Melanau believed that illnesses were caused by supernatural spirits and were cured with herbal medicine or magic charms. If illness persisted, however, a craftsman was asked to carve an image, or blum, of the responsible spirit in sago pith. Water was then poured over the blum and the patient, who would be cured if the diagnosis was correct.
The Melanau produced a whole variety of sickness images, such as small coffins, guardian figures, boats, dragons and tall burial poles. One of the few existing burial totems – carved with a pot-shaped niche that contained the bones of a local dignitary or Melanau aristocrat – stands in the sago village of Tellian, one of the ancient centres of Melanau culture.
June 2010
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