Changing the bittersweet story of the sugar industry

NEGROS OCCIDENTAL – The strong scent of sugar cooking in the boiling vats of a mill here wafted in the air – sweet, sour, earthy, pungent.

It’s the first thing that greeted me as I stepped inside the facility, one of at least 19 remaining sugar mills and refineries in this province touted as the country’s sugar capital.

Turning sugarcane into sugar is actually a long, bittersweet and tedious process that starts long before the harvested crop reaches the millers.

It begins right from the very beginning, from the blood, sweat and tears of tens of thousands of sun-baked sacadas, once upon a time surviving merely on near-slave wages.
Welcome to Negros, welcome to Sugarlandia.

I am here for a quick visit to understand our country’s sugar woes.

The industry is in crisis, so say stakeholders. There has been a “shortage” in supply of sugar in the domestic market.

The government has turned to imports but, as with any commodity, we all know that heavily relying on imports affects the livelihood of workers.

Heyday of the sugar industry

Driving across the different cities in Negros, I couldn’t help but notice the remnants of the sugar industry’s heyday – sprawling mansions and old houses – now mostly empty except for the ghosts and spirits from decades past.
It’s no secret that today, the country’s sugar industry has fallen a long way from the 1950s and 1960s when sugar accounted for as much as 20 percent of Philippine exports.

At the time, the wealth of the sugar barons seemed as infinite as sugar itself. They were the country’s rich and famous; the haciendero dons and their dia-mond and gold-studded wives who traveled the world.

But bad luck, changing times and greed of Marcos Sr.-era cronies contributed to the fall of the sugar industry.

“Expensive foreign cars plied the city’s streets, nightclubs and restaurants thrived and, at one point in the 1970s, impresarios tried to book the Beatles for a Bacolod concert date,” The Washington Post reported in 1986.

But after a peak in 1974 when the world price of sugar reached 65 cents a pound, the market – and the fortunes of Negros – plunged.

“Contributing to the decline, planters say, was Roberto Benedicto, a close friend of former president Ferdinand Marcos and leading beneficiary of a monopo-ly on sugar trading,” the article explained.

“Gambling that the price would reach $1 a pound, Benedicto hoarded sugar until warehouses overflowed, then stored it in empty swimming pools, on bas-ketball courts, soccer fields and anywhere else that could be found, planters recall.

“The market crashed, and Benedicto eventually had to dispose of the sugar at 10 cents a pound. But, with Marcos’ martial-law backing, he passed on the losses to the planters, saddling them with more than $400 million in debts, plus interest,” the report also said.

This was how the misery of sugar planters started.

Changing the story

Now, fast forward to today.

President Marcos Jr., the only son and namesake of the late strongman, has this one chance to change the bittersweet story of the country’s sugar industry by making the industry more competitive.

His administration can start by addressing low production and low sugarcane yield.

Spending a weekend in the different cities here and talking to sugar industry stakeholders, I’ve learned that unfortunately, sugar production is affected by dwindling sugarcane land as real estate developers turn vast tracts of agricultural land into subdivisions or townships.

The other culprit, say sugar workers, are the solar power developers who convert sugar plantations into solar farms.
What to do then?

It is important to address these issues through proper planning and land use and by improving farming efficiencies through the proper application of fertiliz-er, harvesting cane at the right time and having the right number of farm workers to harvest fast and on time.

It is also important to make milling more efficient by having the proper technology to extract the most sugar from sugarcane.

Unfortunately, not a lot of mills invested in equipment upgrade over the years to improve mill efficiencies, as investments were very expensive.

In fact, in a span of a few years, the number of mills in the Philippines has gone down to 27 from 33 mills and the closures continue.

It is therefore crucial for the Marcos administration to support the sugar industry – from planters to millers – to improve productivity.

Incentivizing investments in state-of-the-art milling technologies and use of milling byproducts can strengthen millers.

Providing ample financing to fund the working capital needs of mills to purchase cane would also help.

More importantly, the government must help sugar planters become more efficient through mechanization.
It’s also about time we update the Sugarcane Roadmap to include concrete measures to raise farm and mill productivity.

Fully liberalizing the industry is not the solution as it would predictably hurt planters and millers, with their profits projected to decline by 57 percent.
Indeed, we need to make the sugar industry competitive first so that prices of sugar products can go down, instead of fully liberalizing the sector.

And then there’s the curious case of allegedly premature sugar importation. We cannot afford import irregularities and smuggling – tantamount to economic sabotage – in these already challenging times for the industry.

Would the sugar industry see its heyday again?

Times are different now so this is unlikely but with enough support from the government, Sugarlandia may at least thrive once more and not just survive.

Anything can happen in this Land of Sweet Surprises and hopefully, the once upon a time bittersweet story of the industry may still see a new, sweet and happy chapter.

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