The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) on Thursday, May 18, urged farmers to form cooperatives to pursue block farming for the sugar industry.
SRA Acting Administrator Pablo Luis Azcona said this strategy would help local producers increase their yield by 5 tons to 10 tons per hectare, referring to 30 hectares to 50 hectares of block farming.
“To make it more efficient, we need to group the beneficiaries into farms, a minimum of 30 hectares… The efficiency of a tractor is about 90-95 horsepower. That’s why if their group is that big, we can give them a tractor. We can also help them with technology because they will be able to plan the planting and harvesting into one farm,” Azcona said.
“We also encourage the creation of new cooperatives, to make it faster and to widen our coverage… We can upsize the equipment. Because in sugarcane farming, the bigger the equipment, the more efficient and faster.”
He noted that of the 390,000 hectares of sugar plantations in the country, 90 percent belongs to farmers owning at least one hectare to two hectares of land.
Azcona, meanwhile, said the SRA would finalize the actual production data by the end of the month.
“We are just waiting for the actual production this May to present to the President the actual volume to be imported,” he said.
“”We need almost 150,000 MT. We have a shortfall of 50,000 MT. And the 100,000 MT will serve as a buffer stock for a month or a little over a month,” he added.
Azcona said importers, public consumers, and institutional buyers would all have access to this stock.
The DA on Wednesday noted that the 150,000 MT of importation would help reduce the prices of sugar.
“The prices will be ranging from P80 to P90 per kilo,” Senior Undersecretary Domingo Panganiban said.
To date, the price per kilo of refined sugar in Metro Manila ranges from P86 to P110.*PNA