12.5 Best Practices of Community-Based Sago Palm
Sago palm cultivation has long been carried out in Riau for commercial purposes.
The best practice of sago palm cultivation has been conducting at Sungai Tohor
Village, Meranti Islands Regency, Riau Province since the 1980s by planting two
sago cultivars, namely non-spiny sago and spiny sago without developing canals and
then closing 13 canals which were already made by the community (Wibisono and
Tamrin 2019). Up to 2019, the area of sago plantations in the village has already
reached 2650 ha. The community also made a petition revoking the permit for an
Acacia plantation company at Sungai Tohor Village and blocking the canals that had
been built by the company. President Jokowi paid attention to the petition and then
visited the village on February 21, 2015. He symbolically closed the canals and it
became the momentum of the end of timber company’s operations at Sungai Tohor
Village. The villagers also learned about the weaknesses of sago cultivation
conducted by one sago plantation company around the village that managed intensive drained sago cultivation using canals. The drainage caused wildfires in this area
in 2014 covering area around 1000 ha and in 2018 around 135 ha. Moreover, the
crop performance of the company was lower than that of the community sago
plantations.
Traditional sago cultivation is carried out with several stages as follows
(Wibisono and Tamrin 2019): vegetatively seedling production; land preparation
through weed cleaning; making planting holes with a spacing of 8 Â 8 m; planting;
tending young sago plants, including weed control; replacing dead plants with new
planting stocks; and thinning and harvesting trunks around 10 year olds marked with
the emergence of sago blossom buds and the erection of leaf sheaths.
The local community decided to intensify sago cultivation with planting quality
seedlings and practice several thinning activities in the clusters to leave 60 stems per
hectare. The intensive sago cultivation in the Meranti Islands can produce 200 thousand tons of dry flour/year. With a price of Rp5000/kg, it can produce Rp1 trillion/
year. The results of the financial analysis showed that the cultivation of 96 hectares
of sago for 25 years could produce an NPV of Rp143.2 million, an IRR of 20%, and
a B/C ratio of 1.4216.
The people of Sungai Tohor Village have been mechanically processing sago at
16 sago refineries since 1995 with a total production of 700 tons of sago flour/month.
Each refinery employs 6 workers. As can be seen in Figure 12.4a–c, the farmers
harvested mature sago trunks, cut it into sago bole sortiments (100–120 cm length),
and transported it through small river to the logyard adjacent to the sago refinery.
The wet sago marketing chain was to local communities who managed small-scale
industries producing sago noodle, fat sago, and egg sago and to wholesalers originated from Cirebon and Malaysia. Each sago refinery had an average profit of
Rp8,024,256/month, which generally processed 40–50 ton of wet sago. For the
home industry of sago noodle, fat sago, and egg sago, the net profit was
Rp6,310,602/month, Rp1,461,447/month, and Rp1,125,575/month, respectively.
372
A. P. Tampubolon et al.
Sago palm cultivation has long been carried out in Riau for commercial purposes.
The best practice of sago palm cultivation has been conducting at Sungai Tohor
Village, Meranti Islands Regency, Riau Province since the 1980s by planting two
sago cultivars, namely non-spiny sago and spiny sago without developing canals and
then closing 13 canals which were already made by the community (Wibisono and
Tamrin 2019). Up to 2019, the area of sago plantations in the village has already
reached 2650 ha. The community also made a petition revoking the permit for an
Acacia plantation company at Sungai Tohor Village and blocking the canals that had
been built by the company. President Jokowi paid attention to the petition and then
visited the village on February 21, 2015. He symbolically closed the canals and it
became the momentum of the end of timber company’s operations at Sungai Tohor
Village. The villagers also learned about the weaknesses of sago cultivation
conducted by one sago plantation company around the village that managed intensive drained sago cultivation using canals. The drainage caused wildfires in this area
in 2014 covering area around 1000 ha and in 2018 around 135 ha. Moreover, the
crop performance of the company was lower than that of the community sago
plantations.
Traditional sago cultivation is carried out with several stages as follows
(Wibisono and Tamrin 2019): vegetatively seedling production; land preparation
through weed cleaning; making planting holes with a spacing of 8 Â 8 m; planting;
tending young sago plants, including weed control; replacing dead plants with new
planting stocks; and thinning and harvesting trunks around 10 year olds marked with
the emergence of sago blossom buds and the erection of leaf sheaths.
The local community decided to intensify sago cultivation with planting quality
seedlings and practice several thinning activities in the clusters to leave 60 stems per
hectare. The intensive sago cultivation in the Meranti Islands can produce 200 thousand tons of dry flour/year. With a price of Rp5000/kg, it can produce Rp1 trillion/
year. The results of the financial analysis showed that the cultivation of 96 hectares
of sago for 25 years could produce an NPV of Rp143.2 million, an IRR of 20%, and
a B/C ratio of 1.4216.
The people of Sungai Tohor Village have been mechanically processing sago at
16 sago refineries since 1995 with a total production of 700 tons of sago flour/month.
Each refinery employs 6 workers. As can be seen in Figure 12.4a–c, the farmers
harvested mature sago trunks, cut it into sago bole sortiments (100–120 cm length),
and transported it through small river to the logyard adjacent to the sago refinery.
The wet sago marketing chain was to local communities who managed small-scale
industries producing sago noodle, fat sago, and egg sago and to wholesalers originated from Cirebon and Malaysia. Each sago refinery had an average profit of
Rp8,024,256/month, which generally processed 40–50 ton of wet sago. For the
home industry of sago noodle, fat sago, and egg sago, the net profit was
Rp6,310,602/month, Rp1,461,447/month, and Rp1,125,575/month, respectively.
372
A. P. Tampubolon et al.