Sugar shortage, then and now

Filipinos have been consuming Coca-Cola since it first came to our shores in 1912 and since then we’ve consistently been ranked among its top 10 consumers, even topping the list several times until China and Japan overtook us in terms of volume sales. For weeks now, a sugar shortage has been felt by the nation. In a recent Bloomberg report, the government stated that the sugar shortage is “artificial” and was caused by some traders’ alleged hoarding of supply to generate more profit. While President Marcos initially rejected plans to import sugar, he has now approved the importation of sugar while ordering shops in the country to lower prices.

Our love affair with sugar and issues of shortages are not new to us. During the Spanish period, we were known for exporting sugar. In John Bowring’s book “A Visit to the Philippine Islands”, he made several observations about how Cebu and Iloilo were the best sources of sugar yield, and our sugar was good enough for import to developed nations such as Great Britain and Australia. When the Americans came, we became one of the five major suppliers of America’s sugar needs. After World War I, there was a shortage of sugar due to the increased consumption by Americans. Naturally, our colonizer took advantage of our sugar production, reducing duty on imported sugar from the Philippines from full to 75% from 1902 until 1913 when all sugar importation from the Philippines became duty-free.

In the Philippines, sugar prices were starting to fall even before the start of World War II. In a study published around this period in 1940, there was a drop in sugar export prices and rationing was in effect in the United States as a result of the restrictions governing sugar production in the Philippines and Indonesia. In the early 1970s, sugar became the Philippines’ main source of foreign income when sugar was selling for over $0.30 per pound which increased production. Following martial law in 1972, the sugar industry became a monopoly. In 1974, the sugar boom ended when the Philippines’s preferential trade agreement with the United States expired. As a result, the Philippines' annual exports to the US fell from 1.5 million tons to just a little over 340,000 tons. It did not help that many of former president Marcos’ close allies held the sugar monopoly.

The impacts of the sugar slump in the Philippines were described in a 1985 report by the Christian Science Monitor. With less and less demand for our sugar, workers lost their jobs. Their children could only be fed three times a week, and usually through church food lines. Most children and even many adults in former sugar plantations were malnourished. People were so desperate that at one point rat meat became a common diet among the destitute former sugar workers. At least 21 demonstrators were massacred in Escalante City in Negros Occidental in September 1985. Obviously, the sugar problem had a convoluted history. Because of protectionism, sugar prices being low, this led to a rise in production and the creation of sugar replacements in many countries. But it was believed that in the Philippines, the two-decade rule of former president Marcos made mismanagement and corruption very common in the sugar industry.

The eyes of history are upon us again. The decline of our sugar industry started during the first Marcos administration. Hopefully, his son will be able to solve this current sugar crisis, otherwise, sugar will become a bittersweet memory for many.