SULUHRIAU, Pekanbaru - Riau Provincial Government hosts the implementation of the 4 th Annual Asean Sago Symposium to encourage developed countries and ASEAN to make sago as the world's food.

4 Th Anual Asean Sago Symposium themed 'Sago As Strategic Commodity of the world', Tuesday at Prince Hotel Tuesday (07/08/2018).

This activity was opened by the Governor of Riau Arsyadjuliandi Rachman. On that occasion, he said the activity promoted the potential of sago in Riau.

According to him, the demand for Riau sago continued to increase, especially from the meranti island district as a sago-producing center.

Even now getting processed food from sago, such as in restaurants and hotels has been found a lot, especially it tastes good and health is also very good.

According to the Governor, besides Riau, non-rice producers need thousands of tons of rice to meet the food needs of the population, so sago can be an alternative in food diversification.

Meanwhile, the Head of the Food Security Agency of the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture Dr. Ir. Agung Hendriadi in his speech revealed that Indonesia has extraordinary biodiversity, one of which is Sago which is believed to be able to become a force in order to improve national food security.

At this time Agung Said, his party was doing Food Diversification by making Indonesian food as a healthy and nutritious source of carbohydrates for productive Indonesian people.

Sago as one of the local foods that are rich in healthy and nutritious carbohydrates is also the focus of the Divertification program, by encouraging the processing of Sago into a variety of delicious foods to be consumed by the public.

To succeed in this, the Indonesian Food Security Agency focuses on 2 strategies, namely upstream and downstream. Especially for Hilir explained Agung by developing local food based on home date industry, menunusantara recipe digging, and food consumption campaign movement. While in the upstream sector by encouraging Sago production.

He stated that he was ready to support the Sago Mandatory to become a national strategic food, but to succeed he asked the Regional Industry and Government to boost the production of Indonesian Sago at least 1 million tons or at least 10 percent of the food industry's raw materials using Sago.

"For Mandatory production, the production of Sago must reach at least 1 million tons, and the industry already uses a minimum of 10 percent of the production of Sago, hopefully the production of Sagu Indonesia can increase the same national food security as we seek," he concluded.

On this occasion the Sago-producing Provinces and Regencies in Indonesia made a historic breakthrough by issuing an attitude statement to the Central Government through the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture, which was read by Noah Kabisa, M.Sc, Assistant II of the Papua Provincial Government, together with the Kepulauan Meranti Regent Drs. H. Irwan M.Si and other representatives of Indonesian Sago-producing districts.

The symposium was attended by the Ministry of Agriculture, the Indonesian Food Crops Service, representatives of ASEAN countries, Japan and other developed countries, especially from Europe. [slt]