Rattan is a naturally renewable climbing palm typically used in furniture labeled as wicker, which is the term for how it’s woven. And the price tag for this furniture is usually high: a real rattan chair can cost over $1,000, and as a material, it’s almost three times the price of bamboo! But getting rattan is complicated. What makes it so hard to harvest? And is that the reason it’s so expensive?

EDITOR'S NOTE: At 7:03 in this video, we state that Sarimanto sells 1 kilogram of raw rattan for about 7 cents. This is incorrect. He sells one kilogram of raw rattan for about $14 cents. This would mean that farmers in the 1980s were getting 5 times, not 10 times, as much for the same amount. Insider regrets the error.

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Why Rattan Is So Expensive | So Expensive