A nationwide multi-sectoral group of sugarcane producers and workers slammed the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) on Tuesday, Sept. 8, calling its dismal production forecast a “complete admission of failure” of its own pest control programs.
The group, in a press statement, rejected the SRA’s claim that the projected drop in raw sugar output for Crop Year 2026–2027 is due mainly to the Red-Striped Soft Scale Insect (RSSI) infestation, pointing instead to deeper economic and policy missteps.
Their statement follows a BusinessMirror report on September 4, 2026, where SRA Administrator Pablo Luis Azcona projected raw sugar output for Crop Year 2026–2027 to sink to a 20-year low of 1.662 million metric tons (MMT).
While Azcona blamed the drop on the RSSI pest, The Sugar Council—composed of the Confederation of Sugar Producers Associations, the National Federation of Sugarcane Planters, and the Panay Federation of Sugarcane Farmers — along with labor groups National Congress of Unions in the Sugar Industry of the Philippines and Democratic Association of Labor Organizations, declared the claim misleading “because the decline stems from deeper economic distress rather than a pest infestation alone”.
“Despite the millions spent by the SRA to control the pest, are they now admitting that their solutions simply did not work?” the alliance asked. “This failure is a direct reflection of the SRA’s mismanagement.”
The group stressed that “while RSSI is certainly one factor, it is only part of a much larger problem. RSSI may explain part of the decline of the sugar production, but it does not explain the entire crisis.”
Local production is being choked by a combination of pest infestation, escalating input and labor costs, adverse weather conditions, reduced farm investment, and, most critically, “the deteriorating financial capacity and confidence of our planters.”
The group said, “after the billions of pesos in revenues lost following depressed sugar prices, many small planters simply no longer have the resources to fertilize, cultivate, rehabilitate, replant, and deal with the RSSI infestation.”
When farmers cannot afford essential inputs, crop yields inevitably decline. Furthermore, as planters lose confidence that they can recover their operational costs, they invest less or “eventually stop planting altogether,” it said.
Demanding transparent and proactive leadership, the group called on the SRA to conduct immediate stakeholder consultations to tackle the industry’s decline. They also insisted on a higher standard of management, requesting a month-by-month industry outlook from the regulatory body. According to the group, this data is vital to mapping out precisely when market and production trigger points will be hit.
The group emphasized that these structural financial realities represent “the part of the story that cannot be conveniently blamed on an insect.”
Facing the reality of a harvest that could sink to 1.662 million metric tons in the next crop year—a low not seen since the 1.619 million metric tons recorded in Crop Year 1999–2000—the group said the industry cannot afford to ignore the broader regulatory and economic missteps that crippled local farms.
In a concerted call for an immediate policy reassessment, The Sugar Council, NACUSIP, and DALO said, “We must ask why the industry reached this point,” and asserted that “we need an honest accounting of all the factors that brought us here, including the economic damage suffered by planters and the policies and decisions that contributed to that damage.”
Without a transparent evaluation of the market conditions that penalize local growers, the group warned that industry leaders will “misdiagnose the problem—and once again prescribe the wrong solution”.*
[sibwp_form id=1]