It is a painful admission, but one that must be made. As Negros Occidental Governor Eugenio Jose “Bong” Lacson put it earlier this week, sugar planters have to "bite the bullet."
The reality on the ground is grim. We are looking at a crop year that many would rather forget, but cannot—simply because the debts will remain long after the last cane truck has unloaded at the mill.
We are facing a "double whammy," the Governor said. And he is right. Usually, when production drops, prices go up. That is the law of supply and demand. But not this year. Production is down, yet millgate prices are stuck in the mud, hovering between P2,100 to P2,200 per 50-kilo bag.
Ask any planter, and they will tell you: that price barely covers the cost of fertilizer and labor, let alone the interest on the crop loan.
Why is production down? We need only look back at the calendar. The Typhoons of 2025 were merciless. They came one after another, flattening cane fields just when they were maturing. The stalks that survived the winds and floods were then attacked by pests—the dreaded red-striped soft scale insect.
We lost tonnage to the weather.
We lost purity (LKG/TC) to the stress on the cane. And now, we are losing our shirts to the price.
But the weather is an act of God. What hurts more is the injury inflicted by man—specifically, policy.
The industry is awash in sugar, but not from our fields. The oversupply, allegedly from poor policies of the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) in the past, has choked the market. We are swimming in inventory while our own harvest rots in the field or is sold at a loss.
This is why the Confederation of Sugar Producers Association, Inc. (CONFED), led by Aurelio Gerardo Valderrama Jr., has sent an urgent letter to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
The tone of the letter is not just desperate; it is a warning. Valderrama noted that the labor sector is "already itching to take to the streets." If that happens, we are back to the volatile days of the past.
CONFED has made it clear: The SRA’s proposed "4:1:3" scheme—buy 4, export 1, import 3—is not the solution. The stakeholders have rejected it. It does not make sense to talk about exporting or importing when our local farmers are drowning.
Instead, they are proposing a Government-financed Buying Program. The government should buy domestic raw sugar at a minimum of P2,300 per bag. It’s not a subsidy, they argue. It’s an investment. The government buys it, refines it, and sells it to consumers at a fair price.
This hits two birds with one stone: It lifts the millgate price for the farmer, and it assures the consumer of affordable sugar.
We appreciate the government's announcement to halt sugar importation until December 2026. That is a good first step. But a moratorium on imports does not clear the bodega of the stocks that are already here, depressing prices.
We need to clear the inventory. As CONFED suggested, hold the imported refined sugar in reserve. Do not release it until the local supply is prioritized.
The Governor is waiting to see if prices improve. We are all waiting. But the harvest waits for no one. Every week that passes with prices at P2,100 is a week of losses that can never be recovered.
If the government does not act on the CONFED proposal, this will not just be a lost crop year. It might be the year many small planters finally decide to stop planting altogether.
As Valderrama wrote to the President: "It is time to work together or expire separately."
Let us hope Malacañang chooses the former. Because the sugar industry, battered by the storms of 2025 and the policies of yesterday, cannot survive on hope alone.
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