By Dong de los Reyes January 19, 2023 Quezon 2nd district Rep. David Jayjay Suarez (Photo from Quezon 2nd district Rep. David Jayjay Suarez/...
January 19, 2023
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| Quezon 2nd district Rep. David Jayjay Suarez (Photo from Quezon 2nd district Rep. David Jayjay Suarez/FACWEBOOK) |
LUCENA CITY - Back in the 1970s when sugar fetched about $0.10 a pound in the U.S. market, life was at its sweetest for local sugar barons whose vast haciendas planted to cane yielded hundreds of metric tons and afforded them an affluent lifestyle- lavish parties with champagne flowing at grand ballrooms of five-star hotels, round-the-world tours as a habit, and for Lotharios seeking fleshly delights, even paid-for romps in bed with Hollywood starlets.
Such affluenza never trickled down to lowly sacadas and contratados on whose backs and shoulders the fate of sugarcane production largely rests.
At the advent of the 1990s, land reform touched off changes in the sugar industry; there was breakup of large plantations into smaller-sized holdings of sugar farms. The regrouping of small land size into farming cooperatives has not brought about land re-consolidation- nor higher cane production yields.
Too, ownership of the many sugar mills that dominated the industry of old also went through a shift. World War II destruction of many sugar mills and the grant of war damage payments after the war accelerated the repatriation of American investments in sugar mills.
Many of the sugar mills have been acquired by the food processing companies owned by corporate groups, such as the Gokongweis, San Miguel Corp., Lucio Tan, and others.
The domestic sugar industry went to a rock and rankle confusion as of late about a move to import 300,000 metric tons of sugar to flood local market- and rein in runaway sugar prices.
That has prompted Quezon 2nd district Rep. David Jayjay Suarez to call for a review of the industry and the government agency tasked with overseeing the industry.
Failure?
Suarez called on lawmaker colleagues for a no-nonsense review the mandate of the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) to determine if it has served its purpose as provided for under Executive Order No. 18 and Republic Act 10659, or the Sugarcane Industry Development Act of 2015.
Suarez said the sugar agency looks like it has failed in its mandated work.
He noted that the sugar industry has largely relied on imports to remedy local supply shortfalls.
He pointed to the hullaballoo involving the issuance of an unauthorized order- that nobody would admit to- that would have allowed omported 300,000 metric tons of sugar to flood the local market.
Bewailed Suarez: “Sa 35 taon na buhay ng SRA, hindi naging maayos ang kondisyon ng ating mga magsasaka ng tubo. Nananatiling mababa ang kanilang mga kita at mahirap ang kanilang kabuhayan.
"In my opinion, the SRA has utterly failed to carry out its mandate to uplift the lives of our sugarcane planters and improve the industry,” Suarez lamented.
The Sugarcane Industry Development Act of 2015 (RA 10659), tasks the SRA to promote the competitiveness of the sugarcane industry and maximize the utilization of sugarcane resources and improve the incomes of farmers and farm workers, through improved productivity, product diversification, job generation, and increased efficiency of sugar mills.
“Malinaw na wala namang nagbago sa buhay ng ating mga magsasaka ng tubo. Hindi umangat ang antas ng kanilang mga buhay. On the contrary, their lives seem to have become worse. While already dealing with low production woes because of inclement weather conditions and the COVID-19 pandemic, they also have to constantly compete with imported sugar which have been flooding the local market for years already,” Suarez noted.
Faced with such woes, Suarez recommended that "it is time that Congress review the mandate and continued existence of the SRA. We can recommend legislative remedies and improve it, or maybe we can even recommend its abolition, whichever would bring more benefit to our sugarcane planters, laborers and other stakeholders."
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