by Butch Bacaoco
“Another year over; a new one’s just begun.” For most Filipinos, September signals the first of the “ber” months, the start of the build-up for the four-month Christmas celebration in the Philippines.
For sugarcane farmers, September ushers in the new milling season.
Gone were the days when milling starts as early as mid-August. Under the new dispensation, Crop Year 2023-2024 opened on September 1, 2023.
This crop year, it is mid-September to late September.
Leading the charge is First Farmers Holding Corporation, which will start accepting cane deliveries on September 16. “Milling will commence as soon as the cane stock is sufficient to sustain the operation,” its announcement stated.
Following suit is Victorias Milling Company, which announced that cane acceptance will start on September 23. “Milling will begin once there is sufficient cane supply,” said VMC.
“In light of a number of factors and with the encouragement of the SRA, HPCO will commence milling operations on the 30th of September. We will start receiving canes on Friday, the 27th of September,” stated the announcement from Hawaiian-Philippine Company. The same schedule holds true for URC – La Carlota in the south.
The Sugar Regulatory Administration has been working on moving the start of milling to its original schedule of October 1. From the mid-August opening in years past, SRA batted for September 1, 2023 opening last CY 2023-2024 and mid-to late September opening this CY 2024-2025, targeting the October 1, 2025 opening for CY 2025-2026.
Newspaper reports in July 2023 cited Sugar Regulatory Administrator Paul Azcona, “This is based on two premises – higher yield and, correspondingly, increase in revenue for our sugar farmers, particularly the smaller ones that we need to protect.”
He explained that, based on SRA’s “simulation of the August and September production last year, wherein August figures showed 432,000 tons of cane were milled with an average of 50-kilo bags/ton of cane (LKg/TC) at an average price of P2,800 per LKg bag of sugar or a total of P1.8 billion in revenues.”
“The same volume of canes milled a month later, yielded an average LKg/TC of almost 1.7 at an average price then of P3,300 per LKg bag of sugar or a total of P2.5 billion. It’s a big difference of about P700 million, which could have been additional income for our farmers, especially since most if not all of those who milled in August of last year were our small farmer-beneficiaries,” Azcona was quoted in the same report.
Amid grumblings against SRA’s proposal to import another 150,000 metric tons of sugar at the start of CY 2023-2024, SRA made guarded and coy assurances that sugar prices would not fall below P3,000 per 50-kilo bag.
Well, sugarcane farmers know what happened to sugar prices last crop year.
Since the first bidding of CY 2023-2024, only Hawaiian and First Farmers reported prices barely above P3,000 per bag, and only on two occasions (September 15 and September 22 at an average price of P3,041 and P3,005, respectively).
Other than those two instances, sugar prices failed to breach the P3,000 mark. In fact, the average price for September 2023 was only P2,757.71 per bag, the highest monthly average for the previous crop year.
The start of 2024 (January) registered the lowest monthly average sugar price for CY 2023-2024 at P2,405.23 per bag, while the second lowest monthly average was in December 2023 at P2,414.98 per bag. The previous crop year closed with a monthly average of P2,444.22 per bag in the third week of May 2024.
Sugarcane farmers have not milled since the last week of May 2024, and some for even longer. After a dead season with no income for almost four months (fourth week of May until third week of September), farmers look forward to the start of this crop year’s cane crushing campaign.
The SRA wants to delay milling to give canes, which were damaged by the long drought, enough time to recover and increase their sugar content. Apparently, most mills agree as they move their cane acceptance schedule to mid-September up to end of September.
First Farmers is all poised to accept cane deliveries by September 16. However, the canes of Negros are now water-logged and the cane fields are soft to muddy because of the heavy rains for the past three days.
Given the present scenario, will sugarcane farmers still push through with their harvest?
Perhaps the more important question is: What price levels can farmers expect this crop year?