EAST HALMAHERA, Indonesia — Halik Fanen and his wife, Fatimun, spent much of the day sifting the couple’s inheritance into seven plastic sacks near the east of Indonesia’s Halmahera Island. “These sago trees aren’t giving all that much because they are still small, so the yield is so-so,” Halik told Mongabay Indonesia as flour cascaded into its container. “If they were bigger, we’d have gotten 13 sacks out of these four trees.” Fatimun’s late parents bequeathed to the couple this orchard of sago palms, together with 3 hectares (7.4 acres) of coconut palms. At harvest time, the couple begins a traditional process that refines the raw sago pith into a starchy flour. Sago and root vegetables used to be preferred food staples across much of eastern Indonesia before the New Order government under Suharto began to promote white rice in the 1970s — creating a supply chain for the grain largely controlled by the Suharto family and its retinue of cronies. A new glut of subsidized fertilizer and cheap seeds boosted rice farming, and improved the affordability of a grain previously seen as the food of the elite. Decades later, Indonesian public health experts citing numerous research studies say overreliance on refined white rice is fueling millions of undiagnosed cases of diabetes, which can lead to life-changing injuries and early death. Fatimun refines raw sago pith into a starchy flour. Image by Mahmud Ichi/Mongabay Indonesia. Tumbling rice Bicoli is one of the oldest villages in South Maba subdistrict, which is…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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