Scooping profits from palm sugar

Scooping profits from palm sugar

SANGGAU, West Kalimantan (JP): Don't fail to buy palm sugar as
a gift if you ever tour Batang Tarang, the district capital of
Balai, Sanggau regency, West Kalimantan. The sweet aroma and big
lumps of this product have become the pride of the area.

The large mounds weighing almost a kilogram per piece without
any wrapping distinguish Batang Tarang sugar from similar
products of other regions, which mostly come in small bits
wrapped in rattan leaves.

Tapping sugar from palms is for the Dayak Mali people in Balai
a tradition handed down through generations. Living on the
outskirts of Batang Tarang, they rely on palm sugar as a source
of income besides rubber. Farming used to produce subsistence
crops until three years ago, when they started earning extra cash
from rice sales.

A sugar palm, according to Derim, 56, a local grower, is
tapped twice daily, in the morning and afternoon, yielding 25 kg
to 30 kg of sap. After three hours' boiling it turns out three
kilos to 3.5 kg of solid palm sugar ready for marketing. A stem
has several bunches for sapping, but usually only one is reaped
to ensure a bigger yield and facilitate work.

"A single bunch as a source of liquid sugar is set for three
months' tapping, so that at the monthly capacity of around 60 kg
of solid sugar -- locally called enau -- it produces 180 kg in a
quarter, which is twice the amount for two trees," he explained.

In Batang Tarang, palm sugar retailed for Rp 6,000 to Rp 7,000
per kg in May 2001, against only Rp 3,500 to Rp 4,000 in the
growers' market. But as the post-harvest season of thanksgiving
festivity arrives in May-June, even the village price rises to Rp
4,500 to Rp 5,000 per kg.

The Dayak Mali community has a custom of making cengkarok and
dodol (cakes made from sticky rice and a lot of palm sugar) to
celebrate the event in all rural settlements.

A sugar palm grower with a well-tapped palm can therefore earn
Rp 320,000 (180 kg times Rp 4,000) in three months. As a job done
along with latex collection and farming, enau making thus plays a
major role in raising the local people's total income, not to
mention the low capital involved in this business.

Unlike rubber trees, sugar palms are not affected by weather
conditions when tapped, which enables uninterrupted work and
serves as an advantage over many other crops.

Batang Tarang's palm sugar has fairly bright economic
prospects, as indicated by Sukirman, a staff member of the
district agricultural service. "It's weakness lies in marketing
and processing," he pointed out. So far only locally sold, this
product may reach a higher price if exported to neighboring
countries.

Palm sugar processing, so far done manually, and the less than
attractive packaging of enau, also pose a problem besides the
constraint of lack of capital, as a another palm grower, Karim,
put it: "The government should provide loans for further
developing the enau business to boost productivity." (Edi
Petebang)