Remembering Sago Through Stories Across Time and Seas
Scope
Feature
Client
NA
Year
[2026]
Industry
NA
Sago is an afterthought for us, and my recent grocery runs would confirm it.
In the aisle of local supermarkets, I found rows of tapioca pearls lying on shelves, disguised as sago with no effort to conceal the misnomer. It didn’t feel like deception, but a shrug; a quiet acceptance of displacement by its cheaper, easier-to-produce cousin.
But what’s it to us? Tapioca or sago, we still get the chewy bite that absorbs all the flavours we love in our sabudana khichdi, mango sago and kuih-muih.
It turns out this misunderstood starch unites us through stories of ambition, independence and hope that we’ve long forgotten.
1800s: Never Appreciated
Sago first appeared on the Austronesian plate.
Harvested all year round with very little tending needed, the starchy palm found in the wetlands of modern-day East Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea provided a stable source of food for the indigenous – something they could never expect from hunts or fishing trips.
“It’s a very productive source of energy as long as people have adequate vitamins, minerals, protein, fats from other sources,” said Dr. Patricia Townsend in our conversations.
The anthropologist, who lived among the Sanio-Hiowe people in the early years of her career, integrated herself into the community and language to understand their reliance on the Metroxylon Sagu[i].
She recalled how they would pound, wash, filter and dry its pith into a tanned flour before eating it as pudding or roasted in banana leaves over hot ashes.
“The Sanio realize it’s their source of life, but they don’t emote about what a wonderful food it is. Instead, they value meat and fish and being a successful hunter and fisherman,” she said.
This is not unique to Sanio-Hiowe. In the same country, the Ilahita Arapesh also exchange sago for “masculine” yams and coconuts[ii] – only because the former reproduces in uncontrolled clusters, a reminder of wild fertility that the Arapesh attribute as feminine.
Nusantara locals would sell makanan tanah (Bahasa Indonesia for soil food, or sago and tubers) to cash-strapped colonial traders who exported it to pad their losses from the spice trade[iii]. In replacement, they imported rice grains[iv] for consumption, a status symbol[v] that was far more water-consuming and back-breaking to grow.
1900s: Humble Ambition
The staple – condemned for its accessibility – would later charm Singapore as a beloved commodity; its meteoric rise supported by a generation of enterprising immigrants who endured hard work and risk[vi] to find footing in a new land.
Amongst them was Lee Swee Kim, who started his own sago factory at the age of twenty-seven with his brother-in-law. The Hokkien Chinese immigrants left Malaya to start their business with money cobbled from their savings and his wife’s pawned jewellery[vii].
“Everything was a struggle without enough capital and incomplete equipment,” Lee lamented in an archival interview. He recounts being fined continuously to get a water permit and spending almost $10,000 to bring the water point indoors, which was not a small sum then.
Lee, who later served as the Secretary of the Sago Price Stabilizing Committee, managed to build up his business with the help of his clansmen. Besides exporting the ingredient within Asia, his business grew to Japan (where sago was used for Ajinomoto production) and Liverpool (as glue to produce calico lace).
Like many businesses, Lee wouldn’t have been a one-man operation. Just imagine the other unnamed immigrants that propped up the industry the moment sacks of unprocessed starch filled with twigs, bark and sediments arrived from Indonesia at the entrepot.
Coolies carried these sacks into factories peppered along Sago Lane under the watchful eye of the kapala (headman). Female workers inside factories who would repeatedly wash and filter away impurities to produce the highest quality Grade 1 sago starch loved by the world.
1950s: Tectonic Shifts of Independence
However, fifty years later, these immigrants had to adapt quicky again, when sago’s popularity was quickly obliterated by the region’s growing disillusionment with their colonial masters.
Newly independent India was the first to act. The country started growing tapioca flour in the South and established restrictive license rajs against sago flour imports in the early 1950s.
Kantilal Jamnadas Shah, a new immigrant and merchant living in Singapore at the time recalled how locals handling this business “were all worried, because how would they survive?”[viii]
But he understood why the sago trade with India had to end.
“India is self-sufficient in producing sago flour…Why should she spend foreign exchange to bring this from Singapore?” Shah justified[ix]. Like many others, he later pivoted to coffee, black pepper and tin, and closed his sago business completely.
Later when Indonesia waged Konfrontasi against Singapore and the Federation of Malaya, more businesses were inadvertently left without supplies[x]. Many resorted to smuggling Indonesian sago logs through the Straits of Melaka or triangulating them through Vietnam[xi].
The final blow to the industry came in the early years of Singapore’s independence. Women were attracted to less physically strenuous work at textile and manufacturing factories that arrived under economic expansion initiatives, and withering sago operations couldn’t afford to pay more than the global corporations did[xii].
Eventually, without staff or supplies, these businesses shut down operations, and the local sago trade (and by extension international consumption) went into extinction[xiii].
2020s: Hopeful Renaissance
Till today, sago remains an insignificant source of food, accounting for only 1.5% of the world’s total starch production[xiv].
“I still think it’s underutilized and neglected,” said Dr. Townsend. She recalled how one university didn’t consider sago as an important food crop even in the 2000s, but she knows that things are changing now that Japanese researchers have called the gluten-free starch[xv] their newest superfood with almost 3 – 7 times starch efficiency compared to others[xvi].
CRAUN Research, a Sarawakian food innovation lab has also been working closely with local manufacturers to create diversified products with the staple that United Nations has identified to “enhance food security”[xvii].
“If the whole sago palm and processing stream becomes economically viable, maintaining sago plantations becomes more attractive rather than converting the land to competing crops,” said Ng Yong Kiang, General Manager of Nitsei Sago Industries, who has also been working with CRAUN to produce biogas from sago liquid waste.
Although, the shortage of sago logs isn’t his only headache. “The most fundamental issue facing the industry today is that sago starch is still not well known among the public,” said Ng, who is also the current Chairman of Sarawak Sago Manufacturers’ Association.
He believes that there is a need to reintroduce and rediscover sago. “Many people may have heard the word “sago”, but they do not actually know what genuine sago starch is, where it comes from, how it is produced, or what it can be used for…There is also considerable confusion with tapioca or cassava starch.”
“We want to demonstrate that Sarawak sago is a distinctive and valuable resource with much greater potential.”
Yet none of that is on the label. The plastic packaging carries sago’s name, with someone else’s pearls, but nothing about a way of life that’s given more than she’s ever received.
Which leaves us with an even bigger question to sit with: what does it take to be endlessly useful and endlessly overlooked, and keep showing up anyway? And if we ever found ourselves in her position, plain, dependable and easily replaced, would we?
References
[i] Townsend, P. K. (1974). Sago Production in a New Guinea Economy. Human Ecology, 2(3), 217–236. http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.sg/stable/4602300
[ii] Tuzin, D. (1992). Sago Subsistence and Symbolism among the Illahita Arapesh. Ethnology, 103-114. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/3773615
[iii] Masyitah, P. M., Susilowati, E., & Sulistiyono, S. (2020). The Trade of Sago in Ambon, 1880-1900. Indonesian Historical Studies, 144-154. doi:https://doi.org/10.14710/ihis.v4i2.7625
[iv] Wardis, G. (2014). Socio-Economic Factors That Have Influenced the Decline of Sago Consumption in Small Islands: A Case in Rural Maluku, Indonesia. South Pacific Studies. Retrieved from https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Socio-Economic-Factors-That-Have-Influenced-the-of-Girsang/beaed53cc06b33c7d31b1172d6fdc0044c527c3e?utm_source=direct_link
[v] Johari, K. (2021). The Food of The Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels Through The Archipelago. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd.
[vi] Kwee, H. (2013). Chinese Economic Dominance in Southeast Asia: A "Longue Duree" Perspective. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5-34. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/23526400
[vii] From the oral history interview of Lee Swee Kim (Accession No. 000783, Track No. 6), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[viii] From the oral history interview of Kantilal Jamnadas Shah (Accession No. 000094, Track No. 4), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[ix] From the oral history interview of Kantilal Jamnadas Shah (Accession No. 000094, Track No. 4), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[x] From the oral history interview of Kantilal Jamnadas Shah (Accession No. 000094, Track No. 4), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[xi] Kalir, B., & Sur, M. (2012). Smuggling Cultures in the Indonesia-Singapore Borderlands. In M. Ford, & L. Lyons, Transnational Flows and Permissive Polities: Ethnographies of Human Mobilities in Asia (pp. 91-108). Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press.
[xii] From the oral history interview of Lee Swee Kim (Accession No. 000783, Track No. 7), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[xiii] From the oral history interview of Lee Swee Kim (Accession No. 000094, Track No. 7), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[xiv] Tarver, H., & Austin, A. (2008). Sago. In K. Kiple, The Cambridge World History of Food (pp. 201-207). Cambridge University Press.
[xv] Trisia, M., Takeshita, H., Kikuta, M., Ehara, H., & '. (2020). Factors Determining Sago Starch Import Demand: Empirical Evidence from Japan. Journal of International Logistics and Trade, 159-167.
[xvi] Ehara, H., Toyoda, Y., & Johnson, D. (2018). Sago Palm: Multiple Contributions to Food Security and Sustainable Livelihoods. Springer Nature Link.
[xvii] https://dayakdaily.com/united-nations-fao-identifies-sago-as-a-staple-to-enhance-food-security/
Remembering Sago Through Stories Across Time and Seas
Scope
Feature
Client
NA
Year
[2026]
Industry
NA
Sago is an afterthought for us, and my recent grocery runs would confirm it.
In the aisle of local supermarkets, I found rows of tapioca pearls lying on shelves, disguised as sago with no effort to conceal the misnomer. It didn’t feel like deception, but a shrug; a quiet acceptance of displacement by its cheaper, easier-to-produce cousin.
But what’s it to us? Tapioca or sago, we still get the chewy bite that absorbs all the flavours we love in our sabudana khichdi, mango sago and kuih-muih.
It turns out this misunderstood starch unites us through stories of ambition, independence and hope that we’ve long forgotten.
1800s: Never Appreciated
Sago first appeared on the Austronesian plate.
Harvested all year round with very little tending needed, the starchy palm found in the wetlands of modern-day East Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea provided a stable source of food for the indigenous – something they could never expect from hunts or fishing trips.
“It’s a very productive source of energy as long as people have adequate vitamins, minerals, protein, fats from other sources,” said Dr. Patricia Townsend in our conversations.
The anthropologist, who lived among the Sanio-Hiowe people in the early years of her career, integrated herself into the community and language to understand their reliance on the Metroxylon Sagu[i].
She recalled how they would pound, wash, filter and dry its pith into a tanned flour before eating it as pudding or roasted in banana leaves over hot ashes.
“The Sanio realize it’s their source of life, but they don’t emote about what a wonderful food it is. Instead, they value meat and fish and being a successful hunter and fisherman,” she said.
This is not unique to Sanio-Hiowe. In the same country, the Ilahita Arapesh also exchange sago for “masculine” yams and coconuts[ii] – only because the former reproduces in uncontrolled clusters, a reminder of wild fertility that the Arapesh attribute as feminine.
Nusantara locals would sell makanan tanah (Bahasa Indonesia for soil food, or sago and tubers) to cash-strapped colonial traders who exported it to pad their losses from the spice trade[iii]. In replacement, they imported rice grains[iv] for consumption, a status symbol[v] that was far more water-consuming and back-breaking to grow.
1900s: Humble Ambition
The staple – condemned for its accessibility – would later charm Singapore as a beloved commodity; its meteoric rise supported by a generation of enterprising immigrants who endured hard work and risk[vi] to find footing in a new land.
Amongst them was Lee Swee Kim, who started his own sago factory at the age of twenty-seven with his brother-in-law. The Hokkien Chinese immigrants left Malaya to start their business with money cobbled from their savings and his wife’s pawned jewellery[vii].
“Everything was a struggle without enough capital and incomplete equipment,” Lee lamented in an archival interview. He recounts being fined continuously to get a water permit and spending almost $10,000 to bring the water point indoors, which was not a small sum then.
Lee, who later served as the Secretary of the Sago Price Stabilizing Committee, managed to build up his business with the help of his clansmen. Besides exporting the ingredient within Asia, his business grew to Japan (where sago was used for Ajinomoto production) and Liverpool (as glue to produce calico lace).
Like many businesses, Lee wouldn’t have been a one-man operation. Just imagine the other unnamed immigrants that propped up the industry the moment sacks of unprocessed starch filled with twigs, bark and sediments arrived from Indonesia at the entrepot.
Coolies carried these sacks into factories peppered along Sago Lane under the watchful eye of the kapala (headman). Female workers inside factories who would repeatedly wash and filter away impurities to produce the highest quality Grade 1 sago starch loved by the world.
1950s: Tectonic Shifts of Independence
However, fifty years later, these immigrants had to adapt quicky again, when sago’s popularity was quickly obliterated by the region’s growing disillusionment with their colonial masters.
Newly independent India was the first to act. The country started growing tapioca flour in the South and established restrictive license rajs against sago flour imports in the early 1950s.
Kantilal Jamnadas Shah, a new immigrant and merchant living in Singapore at the time recalled how locals handling this business “were all worried, because how would they survive?”[viii]
But he understood why the sago trade with India had to end.
“India is self-sufficient in producing sago flour…Why should she spend foreign exchange to bring this from Singapore?” Shah justified[ix]. Like many others, he later pivoted to coffee, black pepper and tin, and closed his sago business completely.
Later when Indonesia waged Konfrontasi against Singapore and the Federation of Malaya, more businesses were inadvertently left without supplies[x]. Many resorted to smuggling Indonesian sago logs through the Straits of Melaka or triangulating them through Vietnam[xi].
The final blow to the industry came in the early years of Singapore’s independence. Women were attracted to less physically strenuous work at textile and manufacturing factories that arrived under economic expansion initiatives, and withering sago operations couldn’t afford to pay more than the global corporations did[xii].
Eventually, without staff or supplies, these businesses shut down operations, and the local sago trade (and by extension international consumption) went into extinction[xiii].
2020s: Hopeful Renaissance
Till today, sago remains an insignificant source of food, accounting for only 1.5% of the world’s total starch production[xiv].
“I still think it’s underutilized and neglected,” said Dr. Townsend. She recalled how one university didn’t consider sago as an important food crop even in the 2000s, but she knows that things are changing now that Japanese researchers have called the gluten-free starch[xv] their newest superfood with almost 3 – 7 times starch efficiency compared to others[xvi].
CRAUN Research, a Sarawakian food innovation lab has also been working closely with local manufacturers to create diversified products with the staple that United Nations has identified to “enhance food security”[xvii].
“If the whole sago palm and processing stream becomes economically viable, maintaining sago plantations becomes more attractive rather than converting the land to competing crops,” said Ng Yong Kiang, General Manager of Nitsei Sago Industries, who has also been working with CRAUN to produce biogas from sago liquid waste.
Although, the shortage of sago logs isn’t his only headache. “The most fundamental issue facing the industry today is that sago starch is still not well known among the public,” said Ng, who is also the current Chairman of Sarawak Sago Manufacturers’ Association.
He believes that there is a need to reintroduce and rediscover sago. “Many people may have heard the word “sago”, but they do not actually know what genuine sago starch is, where it comes from, how it is produced, or what it can be used for…There is also considerable confusion with tapioca or cassava starch.”
“We want to demonstrate that Sarawak sago is a distinctive and valuable resource with much greater potential.”
Yet none of that is on the label. The plastic packaging carries sago’s name, with someone else’s pearls, but nothing about a way of life that’s given more than she’s ever received.
Which leaves us with an even bigger question to sit with: what does it take to be endlessly useful and endlessly overlooked, and keep showing up anyway? And if we ever found ourselves in her position, plain, dependable and easily replaced, would we?
References
[i] Townsend, P. K. (1974). Sago Production in a New Guinea Economy. Human Ecology, 2(3), 217–236. http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.sg/stable/4602300
[ii] Tuzin, D. (1992). Sago Subsistence and Symbolism among the Illahita Arapesh. Ethnology, 103-114. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/3773615
[iii] Masyitah, P. M., Susilowati, E., & Sulistiyono, S. (2020). The Trade of Sago in Ambon, 1880-1900. Indonesian Historical Studies, 144-154. doi:https://doi.org/10.14710/ihis.v4i2.7625
[iv] Wardis, G. (2014). Socio-Economic Factors That Have Influenced the Decline of Sago Consumption in Small Islands: A Case in Rural Maluku, Indonesia. South Pacific Studies. Retrieved from https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Socio-Economic-Factors-That-Have-Influenced-the-of-Girsang/beaed53cc06b33c7d31b1172d6fdc0044c527c3e?utm_source=direct_link
[v] Johari, K. (2021). The Food of The Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels Through The Archipelago. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd.
[vi] Kwee, H. (2013). Chinese Economic Dominance in Southeast Asia: A "Longue Duree" Perspective. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5-34. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/23526400
[vii] From the oral history interview of Lee Swee Kim (Accession No. 000783, Track No. 6), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[viii] From the oral history interview of Kantilal Jamnadas Shah (Accession No. 000094, Track No. 4), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[ix] From the oral history interview of Kantilal Jamnadas Shah (Accession No. 000094, Track No. 4), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[x] From the oral history interview of Kantilal Jamnadas Shah (Accession No. 000094, Track No. 4), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[xi] Kalir, B., & Sur, M. (2012). Smuggling Cultures in the Indonesia-Singapore Borderlands. In M. Ford, & L. Lyons, Transnational Flows and Permissive Polities: Ethnographies of Human Mobilities in Asia (pp. 91-108). Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press.
[xii] From the oral history interview of Lee Swee Kim (Accession No. 000783, Track No. 7), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[xiii] From the oral history interview of Lee Swee Kim (Accession No. 000094, Track No. 7), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[xiv] Tarver, H., & Austin, A. (2008). Sago. In K. Kiple, The Cambridge World History of Food (pp. 201-207). Cambridge University Press.
[xv] Trisia, M., Takeshita, H., Kikuta, M., Ehara, H., & '. (2020). Factors Determining Sago Starch Import Demand: Empirical Evidence from Japan. Journal of International Logistics and Trade, 159-167.
[xvi] Ehara, H., Toyoda, Y., & Johnson, D. (2018). Sago Palm: Multiple Contributions to Food Security and Sustainable Livelihoods. Springer Nature Link.
[xvii] https://dayakdaily.com/united-nations-fao-identifies-sago-as-a-staple-to-enhance-food-security/
Remembering Sago Through Stories Across Time and Seas
Scope
Feature
Client
NA
Year
[2026]
Industry
NA
Sago is an afterthought for us, and my recent grocery runs would confirm it.
In the aisle of local supermarkets, I found rows of tapioca pearls lying on shelves, disguised as sago with no effort to conceal the misnomer. It didn’t feel like deception, but a shrug; a quiet acceptance of displacement by its cheaper, easier-to-produce cousin.
But what’s it to us? Tapioca or sago, we still get the chewy bite that absorbs all the flavours we love in our sabudana khichdi, mango sago and kuih-muih.
It turns out this misunderstood starch unites us through stories of ambition, independence and hope that we’ve long forgotten.
1800s: Never Appreciated
Sago first appeared on the Austronesian plate.
Harvested all year round with very little tending needed, the starchy palm found in the wetlands of modern-day East Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea provided a stable source of food for the indigenous – something they could never expect from hunts or fishing trips.
“It’s a very productive source of energy as long as people have adequate vitamins, minerals, protein, fats from other sources,” said Dr. Patricia Townsend in our conversations.
The anthropologist, who lived among the Sanio-Hiowe people in the early years of her career, integrated herself into the community and language to understand their reliance on the Metroxylon Sagu[i].
She recalled how they would pound, wash, filter and dry its pith into a tanned flour before eating it as pudding or roasted in banana leaves over hot ashes.
“The Sanio realize it’s their source of life, but they don’t emote about what a wonderful food it is. Instead, they value meat and fish and being a successful hunter and fisherman,” she said.
This is not unique to Sanio-Hiowe. In the same country, the Ilahita Arapesh also exchange sago for “masculine” yams and coconuts[ii] – only because the former reproduces in uncontrolled clusters, a reminder of wild fertility that the Arapesh attribute as feminine.
Nusantara locals would sell makanan tanah (Bahasa Indonesia for soil food, or sago and tubers) to cash-strapped colonial traders who exported it to pad their losses from the spice trade[iii]. In replacement, they imported rice grains[iv] for consumption, a status symbol[v] that was far more water-consuming and back-breaking to grow.
1900s: Humble Ambition
The staple – condemned for its accessibility – would later charm Singapore as a beloved commodity; its meteoric rise supported by a generation of enterprising immigrants who endured hard work and risk[vi] to find footing in a new land.
Amongst them was Lee Swee Kim, who started his own sago factory at the age of twenty-seven with his brother-in-law. The Hokkien Chinese immigrants left Malaya to start their business with money cobbled from their savings and his wife’s pawned jewellery[vii].
“Everything was a struggle without enough capital and incomplete equipment,” Lee lamented in an archival interview. He recounts being fined continuously to get a water permit and spending almost $10,000 to bring the water point indoors, which was not a small sum then.
Lee, who later served as the Secretary of the Sago Price Stabilizing Committee, managed to build up his business with the help of his clansmen. Besides exporting the ingredient within Asia, his business grew to Japan (where sago was used for Ajinomoto production) and Liverpool (as glue to produce calico lace).
Like many businesses, Lee wouldn’t have been a one-man operation. Just imagine the other unnamed immigrants that propped up the industry the moment sacks of unprocessed starch filled with twigs, bark and sediments arrived from Indonesia at the entrepot.
Coolies carried these sacks into factories peppered along Sago Lane under the watchful eye of the kapala (headman). Female workers inside factories who would repeatedly wash and filter away impurities to produce the highest quality Grade 1 sago starch loved by the world.
1950s: Tectonic Shifts of Independence
However, fifty years later, these immigrants had to adapt quicky again, when sago’s popularity was quickly obliterated by the region’s growing disillusionment with their colonial masters.
Newly independent India was the first to act. The country started growing tapioca flour in the South and established restrictive license rajs against sago flour imports in the early 1950s.
Kantilal Jamnadas Shah, a new immigrant and merchant living in Singapore at the time recalled how locals handling this business “were all worried, because how would they survive?”[viii]
But he understood why the sago trade with India had to end.
“India is self-sufficient in producing sago flour…Why should she spend foreign exchange to bring this from Singapore?” Shah justified[ix]. Like many others, he later pivoted to coffee, black pepper and tin, and closed his sago business completely.
Later when Indonesia waged Konfrontasi against Singapore and the Federation of Malaya, more businesses were inadvertently left without supplies[x]. Many resorted to smuggling Indonesian sago logs through the Straits of Melaka or triangulating them through Vietnam[xi].
The final blow to the industry came in the early years of Singapore’s independence. Women were attracted to less physically strenuous work at textile and manufacturing factories that arrived under economic expansion initiatives, and withering sago operations couldn’t afford to pay more than the global corporations did[xii].
Eventually, without staff or supplies, these businesses shut down operations, and the local sago trade (and by extension international consumption) went into extinction[xiii].
2020s: Hopeful Renaissance
Till today, sago remains an insignificant source of food, accounting for only 1.5% of the world’s total starch production[xiv].
“I still think it’s underutilized and neglected,” said Dr. Townsend. She recalled how one university didn’t consider sago as an important food crop even in the 2000s, but she knows that things are changing now that Japanese researchers have called the gluten-free starch[xv] their newest superfood with almost 3 – 7 times starch efficiency compared to others[xvi].
CRAUN Research, a Sarawakian food innovation lab has also been working closely with local manufacturers to create diversified products with the staple that United Nations has identified to “enhance food security”[xvii].
“If the whole sago palm and processing stream becomes economically viable, maintaining sago plantations becomes more attractive rather than converting the land to competing crops,” said Ng Yong Kiang, General Manager of Nitsei Sago Industries, who has also been working with CRAUN to produce biogas from sago liquid waste.
Although, the shortage of sago logs isn’t his only headache. “The most fundamental issue facing the industry today is that sago starch is still not well known among the public,” said Ng, who is also the current Chairman of Sarawak Sago Manufacturers’ Association.
He believes that there is a need to reintroduce and rediscover sago. “Many people may have heard the word “sago”, but they do not actually know what genuine sago starch is, where it comes from, how it is produced, or what it can be used for…There is also considerable confusion with tapioca or cassava starch.”
“We want to demonstrate that Sarawak sago is a distinctive and valuable resource with much greater potential.”
Yet none of that is on the label. The plastic packaging carries sago’s name, with someone else’s pearls, but nothing about a way of life that’s given more than she’s ever received.
Which leaves us with an even bigger question to sit with: what does it take to be endlessly useful and endlessly overlooked, and keep showing up anyway? And if we ever found ourselves in her position, plain, dependable and easily replaced, would we?
References
[i] Townsend, P. K. (1974). Sago Production in a New Guinea Economy. Human Ecology, 2(3), 217–236. http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.sg/stable/4602300
[ii] Tuzin, D. (1992). Sago Subsistence and Symbolism among the Illahita Arapesh. Ethnology, 103-114. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/3773615
[iii] Masyitah, P. M., Susilowati, E., & Sulistiyono, S. (2020). The Trade of Sago in Ambon, 1880-1900. Indonesian Historical Studies, 144-154. doi:https://doi.org/10.14710/ihis.v4i2.7625
[iv] Wardis, G. (2014). Socio-Economic Factors That Have Influenced the Decline of Sago Consumption in Small Islands: A Case in Rural Maluku, Indonesia. South Pacific Studies. Retrieved from https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Socio-Economic-Factors-That-Have-Influenced-the-of-Girsang/beaed53cc06b33c7d31b1172d6fdc0044c527c3e?utm_source=direct_link
[v] Johari, K. (2021). The Food of The Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels Through The Archipelago. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd.
[vi] Kwee, H. (2013). Chinese Economic Dominance in Southeast Asia: A "Longue Duree" Perspective. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5-34. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/23526400
[vii] From the oral history interview of Lee Swee Kim (Accession No. 000783, Track No. 6), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[viii] From the oral history interview of Kantilal Jamnadas Shah (Accession No. 000094, Track No. 4), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[ix] From the oral history interview of Kantilal Jamnadas Shah (Accession No. 000094, Track No. 4), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[x] From the oral history interview of Kantilal Jamnadas Shah (Accession No. 000094, Track No. 4), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[xi] Kalir, B., & Sur, M. (2012). Smuggling Cultures in the Indonesia-Singapore Borderlands. In M. Ford, & L. Lyons, Transnational Flows and Permissive Polities: Ethnographies of Human Mobilities in Asia (pp. 91-108). Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press.
[xii] From the oral history interview of Lee Swee Kim (Accession No. 000783, Track No. 7), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[xiii] From the oral history interview of Lee Swee Kim (Accession No. 000094, Track No. 7), Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore
[xiv] Tarver, H., & Austin, A. (2008). Sago. In K. Kiple, The Cambridge World History of Food (pp. 201-207). Cambridge University Press.
[xv] Trisia, M., Takeshita, H., Kikuta, M., Ehara, H., & '. (2020). Factors Determining Sago Starch Import Demand: Empirical Evidence from Japan. Journal of International Logistics and Trade, 159-167.
[xvi] Ehara, H., Toyoda, Y., & Johnson, D. (2018). Sago Palm: Multiple Contributions to Food Security and Sustainable Livelihoods. Springer Nature Link.
[xvii] https://dayakdaily.com/united-nations-fao-identifies-sago-as-a-staple-to-enhance-food-security/