The tree is capable of producing 19 tons of ethanol per hectare each year, it is a far superior ethanol source to the food crops previously used such as the 3.3 tons produced from a hectare of corn or 4.5 tons possible from sugar cane. The Sugar Palm’s life is actually extended by having its juice tapped by Indonesian natives who are provided with much needed employment income through the sustainable harvest of Sugar Palm juice. Arenga Tree elegantly provides simple solution to native poverty, rainforest destruction, and renewable energy demand.

Sugar Palms cannot be grown in rows over acres of cleared land. They do best as part of complex rainforest ecosystems, and can be grown among other crops. Their deep roots make them well suited to very sloped and disturbed land where the tree never requires watering or fertilizing by humans, but can only be harvested by hand by the skilled tappers that carefully tend each tree by taking thin slices from the ends of the male-flower stalks twice per day to collect a portion of the tree’s prolific production of juicy sap. The sap spoils very quickly as it almost immediately begins to ferment and so must be preserved on site in the deep jungle.

The characteristics of the tree’s growth habits that make its harvest so sustainable have also made it unappealing to modern farmers that prefer to grow their crops in extensive swaths that can be machine harvested in hundreds of acres at once.