Lure of the land

One film of my youth was Gone with the Wind. I have watched it over and over a number of times. One striking image I always have is that of Scarlet O’Hara dramatically kneeling on the ground, blazing Tara behind her, in the silhouette dramatically calling in God as her witness. Part of her whole story was the love for Tara her home, and the land on which it stood. The sweeping epic was the history of the southern lands shared by both landowners and their cotton field slaves.

I never could understand my mother’s constant nostalgia for the haciendas of Negros where she grew up. She is, after all, a province girl at heart, always reminding me that Negros is where she would like to be at the end of her life. But to my mind, growing up, the sugar lands carried the stories of an elite lifestyle, sugar barons and sakadas that toiled the sugar plantations. My childhood memories were of my grandfather taking us to the hacienda, giving us tubo and teaching us how to eat it; large society parties in my grandparents’ estate; my grandmother, a woman leader at the center of local politics and the church. But there was much poverty around….something my young eyes were sensitive enough to see.

It’s been a roundabout way for me, this coming home to the land. Through the development work I do all over the country related to sustainability, it was to the earth and how she could be sustained that I worked for. It suddenly hit me so personal, when, during a recent trip back to Negros Occidental, I was walking the haciendas, not for the sugar, but only because I tagged along with coffee expert friends from the Philippine Coffee Board Nicky Mati and Chit Juan. That trip for me was R&R to just get away from the city and breathe some fresh air. Here were coffee planters — tenders of the earth — who spoke agriculture, planting seasons and talking harvest. I half-listened, roaming around looking at estate coffee plants shade grown under great trees, climbed a hill to study the mountain side prepared for planting, enjoying the nip of the fresh farm breeze, and the pure tranquility of nature as I looked across Mount Kanlaon. Then a visit to Dr. Albert Ho in Don Salvador Benedicto came next. His passion and obsession was to till the earth to allow medicinal plants and shrubs to grow and allow nature to offer him a whole “farmacy” to help cure people.

Soon, I found myself walking on land owned by my own family through the generations. And something strange started to happen. Growing deep inside was a stirring and a connection. I had a terrible overwhelming longing to till the land. There is a saying of old that the spirit of the land calls you back when you are ready to hear. Perhaps it was the whispers of my ancestors, calling out to me, and the strange effect of majestic Mount Kanlaon silently watching above.

Soon, I then found myself in a forum gathering of sugar industry stakeholders brought together for discussion by the Peace and Equity Foundation. The discussion centered around what the ASEAN economic integration’s effect be on farmers and our local sugar industry.

Gina Bautista-Martin, administrator of the Sugar Regulatory Administration discussed how the sugar industry in Negros was different from Luzon and Mindanao. During the Marcos regime, Negros carried the feudal stigma and was hit hardest by the Agrarian Reform Program. When the Marcos government took over the role of the market, it signaled catastrophe for the planters. I remember in my teen years, hearing stories of how the industry was declining, and how the cartel was tainted with controversies. Studies later show how between 1974 to 1983, the sugar producers’ losses have reached to estimate value between P11 billion and P14 billion. And because the planters could not sell, the farmers starved. Famine was the result in 1982 and was considered the darkest times of the province.

Today, the Philippines is the second largest exporter of sugar in ASEAN, second only to Thailand. Negros accounts for 60 percent of the sugar the country exports and with the most mills in the country (13 to date). Sugar, as a plantation crop, needs at least 30 hectares, and with less planters now, and farmlands subdivided into smaller plots, farmers need to work together as groups, or partner with big industry to maximize production capacities. With the coming free trade agreement by 2015, the local sugar industry will no longer be protected with the tariff barrier. Price discrepancy could actually pose a threat among small-scale sugar producers who could be possibly eliminated due to stiff competition with cheap imported sugar.

Edith Villanueva of the Sugar Industry Foundation Inc. highlighted how they have changed the game, especially to offset the effects of agrarian land reform program when sugarcane workers suddenly became instant farmers, with no understanding how to manage farmlands. Where majority of land were handled by planters, now 90 percent of land is in the hands of small farmers and only 10 percent with planters. Education and training become paramount in that they needed to produce agri-preneurs with a new managerial mindset of handling the farms including management, bookkeeping and other related skills.

The industry could further diversify, studying production direction that can address the whole value chain, creating more value additions to sugar, such as centrifugal sugar and muscovado. There are also potentials for products that could breakthrough during the unified market in 2015. These include products produced by social enterprises such as coco water, desiccated coconut, virgin coconut oil, coconut sugar, banana flour coffee, and gluten-free flour. Even farmlands could move into more aggressive planting of diversified and cash crops under integrated programs. The sugar industry is now also among the forefront of alternative and renewable energy sources, which include biofuel through bioethanol production and co-generation activities.

From a history of sugar baron patronage and feudalism, to government cartels that have caused famine, today, the story is towards productive self-reliance. And the lure of the land for me now is not all about ownership but productivity that can allow what one owns to benefit the many and make other lives better.