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[av_heading heading=’ ‘BITTER FUTURE’ Sugar group leader warns of ‘looming crisis’ ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=’30’ subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY RANIE AZUE
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Thursday, October 5, 2017
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BACOLOD City – Secretary-general Butch Lozande of the National Federation of Sugarcane Workers (NFSW) warned sugar dependents of a looming crisis in the industry.
According to Lozande, the sugar industry did not recover after a drop in domestic prices – which the import of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) caused – last year.
The sugar milling season for crop year 2017-2018 began with a “very unstable” price at P1,370 per Lkg, Lozande stressed.
This season’s starting price is lower than last year’s P1,800 per Lkg, the NFSW head added.
“If the price of sugar is low at its opening harvest in September, it will further slide down even at its peak harvest from November to March,” Lozande explained.
He added that the starting price in September is close to the breakeven cost of sugar production.
“It (starting price) is the gauge of (the sugar industry’s) stability,” Lozande furthered.
This development has caused “restlessness” among big-time and small-time sugarcane planters and workers, especially those who are agrarian reform beneficiaries, Lozande claimed.
If this continues, a sugar crisis similar to those that happened from 1975 to 1977 and 1984 to 1987 might reoccur, he said.
On Sept. 7, a sugar summit was held in this city as the milling season began.
The summit discussed the issue that threatens the sugar industry.
Demands and policies of sugar dependents were consolidated into a list of resolutions that Lozande said will be forwarded to concerned agencies.
NFSW believed that the sugar industry problem can be mainly attributed to the government’s inclination to neo-liberal economic policies, and not simply on the “over importation” of sugar-based products, like the HFCS.
The sugar group added that it is hastened by the “backwardness of the Philippines basic industrial base and absence of genuine agrarian reform.”
A two-day assembly, which started yesterday, was conducted to address the impending sugar crisis.
A total of 300 leaders and members of sugar farmers’ organizations attended the assembly in this city./PN
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