ASIATODAY.ID, JAKARTA – Indonesia is starting to diversify its consumption of carbohydrate sources as an effort to maintain domestic food security. The reason is, local food products are considered to be one of the right choices because they are resistant to climate and weather changes.
One local food commodity that has the potential to be developed is sago.
“Sago trees can continue to grow even during floods or during periods of drought due to long dry seasons, so that sago trees are not affected by natural phenomena such as La Nina and El Nino,” said the Director General of Agro Industry, Putu Juli Ardika, on the sidelines of the Business Matching event. 2024 Shopping for Domestic Products in Bali, last Wednesday, March 6 2024.
Sago has the potential to be developed as an alternative food source of the main national carbohydrate because Indonesia has an estimated 5.5 million hectares of sago land.
“The large area of sago land can become a large source of carbohydrate food reserves for the country and the world, however domestic sago processing has not been carried out on a massive scale,” continued Putu.
The Ministry of Industry continues to encourage the development of downstream sago in the country by supporting increased sago starch production and diversification of processed sago starch products.
In 2023, the Ministry of Industry is collaborating with several large sago starch producing industries to increase production utilization.
“Utilization of national sago starch industry production is currently still very low, namely below 30%. “This is a result of the industry’s limitations in obtaining raw materials for sago pith,” he explained.
Sago pith is easily damaged because it oxidizes quickly, so the industry cannot obtain sago pith raw materials from distant locations.
The government is collaborating with the sago starch industry to develop a business model for the sago starch industry by using wet sago produced by Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises as raw material for the sago starch industry.
The use of wet sago by Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises can slow down the oxidation process so that the reach of raw materials for the sago starch industry becomes wider and can provide added value to sago farmers.
Apart from developing the sago business model, the Ministry of Industry also supports the diversification of processed sago starch products.
Currently, sago starch is mostly known as an ingredient for making papeda, but currently the sago processing industry has begun to grow into modern products such as instant noodles and analog rice.
“This processed food product has the potential to become the main food substitute for rice, especially during times of rice scarcity,” he said. (AT Network)
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