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)