The National Congress of Unions in the Sugar Industry of the Philippines–Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (NACUSIP–TUCP) is calling on Negros leaders to stop “wasteful” aerial spraying and bypass bureaucratic red tape to deliver direct cash relief to thousands of affected farmers as the devastating Red-striped soft scale insects (RSSI) sweep across sugarlands in Negros Island.
In an open letter from Roland de la Cruz, NACUSIP president, released to the media Monday, July 20, the unions sounded the alarm over the rapid spread of the RSSI, which has now crippled over 78,000 hectares of sugarcane fields across both Negros Occidental and Oriental.
NACUSIP-TUCP, citing Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) data, said the scale of the RSSI damage has reached catastrophic proportions.
In Negros Occidental the pests have ravaged 61,242 hectares, wiping out 32.18 percent of the province’s total sugarcane area, and in Negros Oriental the infestation has hit 16,970 hectares, compromising roughly 34.7 percent of its sugar lands, de la Cruz said.
With the infestation slashing crop yields by up to 50 percent, NACUSIP–TUCP warned that thousands of farmworkers, mill laborers, and agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) are facing immediate financial ruin.
NACUSIP TUCP commended Negros Occidental Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson and the provincial council for their swift action in placing the province under a State of Calamity, a move that unlocked the provincial Quick Response Fund.
It also lauded Negros Oriental Governor Manuel Sagarbarria for establishing a dedicated provincial task force, while urging his provincial council to fast-track their own State of Calamity declaration to fully mobilize resources.
However, the union emphasized that how these emergency funds are spent will determine the survival of local families.
“Our farmworkers cannot afford to let local emergency funds get tied up in bureaucratic red tape,” the union said, urging leaders to bypass restrictive bottlenecks.
“Deliver emergency calamity funds directly into the hands of the individuals working the soil”, NACUSIP TUCP said.
AERIAL SPRAYING
A central target of the union’s letter was the SRA’s highly publicized tech-driven mitigation efforts.
NACUSIP–TUCP claimed that field experts and sugar workers have documented the “definitive failure” of drone and aerial chemical-spraying campaigns.
Because the RSSI pest breeds and feeds specifically on the underside of sugarcane leaves, overhead spraying merely coats the top canopy, allowing the insects to survive and migrate to neighboring farms, it said.
The union noted that while aggressive SRA spraying campaigns in mid-2025 brought temporary relief after the pest initially alarmed the region in 2024, the current 2026 crisis proves that overhead methods cannot solve a ground-level epidemic.
NACUSIP–TUCP is urging the SRA and local government units to immediately abandon expensive aircraft campaigns.
Instead, they demand a shift toward fiscal prudence, redirecting those funds into direct crop subsidies and science-based, environmentally responsible biological controls combined with manual, targeted ground spraying.*
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