The Muscovado Sugar Industry

The growing consumer’s concerns regarding health welfare, laterally with their willingness to pay premium price in return for healthy food is fueling the demand of organic food and beverages market in Asia-Pacific region and even at the global level. Market is driven by the increasing consumer awareness towards organic benefits associated with its consumption, adoption of organic farming methods, and implementation of organic regulations.

Sugar is one of the prime commodities traded in the market today, since an average person consumes about 24 kilograms (53 lb) of sugar each year (33.1 kg in industrialized countries), which is equivalent to over 260 food calories per person, per day. With this, muscovado sugar industry was appraised as a sunrise industry in the trend towards healthy lifestyles all over the world headed by people in Europe, Japan and the US.

In the international trade, the world sugar averages about 64 million tonnes per year. The 60% of internationally trade volumes accounts for the raw sugar.  Top 5 exporters that were responsible on average nearly 70% of the world sugar trade in 2016 to 2018 are Brazil, Thailand, EU, Australia, and India. About 45% of the global exports came from the largest producer and exporter of muscovado sugar which is Brazil. (The Sugar Market, 2019).

Since 1987, Philippines has been exporting small quantities of muscovado sugar to Japan, Switzerland, Australia, US and Germany but then a project called Promoting Rural Industries and Market Enhancement (PRIME) helped the farmers to be equipped with the capability and the capacity to compete for a bigger share of the international market. Today, Soliguen, Negros Occidental is exporting muscovado sugar cubes to Japan (Paras-Sison, 2008).

The annual global sugar production planted in 2002 reached l00 million tons with 13 million hectares with most of the sugar coming from India, and Brazil. Likewise, about 168 million tons of sugar in 2011 were produced. Countries like Barbados and Mauritius produces sugar from sugarcane. Europe, on the other hand, supports sugar industries based on sugar beets. This root to reduction on revenues on other sugar producing countries.

In 2002, the muscovado that were produced were about13.8 metric tons globally, India being the top producer with 9.8 metric tons followed by Columbia and Pakistan. The Philippines provided 0.1 metric tons representing 0.8% of total production and was the eighth largest producer in the world. In 2003, out of a total muscovado production of 5.4 million kilos, the Philippines exported only 481,000 kilos or only 8.9 % due to poor quality or competitiveness in the international market (Flores, 2007). 

In 2005, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) committed to provide $4.95 million for the five-year PRIME initiative and chose Philippine Development Assistance Programme Inc. (PDAP) as its executing agency, partner, and recipient. Under PRIME, which supports the development of organic and natural products to become rural industries, PDAP recommended the shift from conventional to organic farming to push forward the development of the muscovado industry.  The participation of muscovado farmers and traders in PRIME, as well as the support of the Region 6 office of the Department of Agriculture, has allowed Antique to increase its muscovado capacity from 700 hectares in 2006 to over 1,000 hectares in 2007. (Paras-Sison, 2008)

According to a Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) report released in 2006, there was only 2,071 hectares allotted for muscovado production which is only a little part of the 396,135 hectares planted to sugarcane. Antique tops the muscovado producing provinces followed by Negros Occidental, and Sultan Kudarat (Jung, 2014).  

In Polangui, Albay the production of muscovado is increasing through time. The Department of Agriculture (DA) of Polangui, Albay holds records of muscovado production in the area, of different producers from different barangays. The amount of sugarcane harvested for production of muscovado for the past few years was recorded as well as the name of the farmers, the increase in production as time passes is easily observed from the given data in Table 1.

Most farmers of muscovado are small scale farmers with an average landholding of just over a hectare. Due to the small size of the ventures, the farmers often must perform multiple functions from planting, harvesting, processing, and even marketing the products.

In order to have a bulk production of Muscovado sugar in the Philippines, it is important to consider an investment in technologies that would help the processing of muscovado since it is done in traditional way.