SUGAR was the “ new gold” in the late 19th century and the insatiable need for sugar was what led the United States, then a rising military power, to conquer five sugar producing areas: the Philippines, Hawaii, Cuba, Guam and Puerto Rico. Aware that it cannot take so many territories of “brown and colored people,” the final decision of the new imperial power was to annex Hawaii and make it the 50th state, then grant commonwealth status to Guam and Puerto Rico, including citizenship to its residents, although with limited voting rights. And then allow the independence of Cuba and the Philippines after a transition period.
The annexation of Hawaii was through a bloodless coup — the then Kingdom of Hawaii had no standing army and navy — and the bloodiest of all the takeovers was that of the Philippines.
Even with their independent status, the Philippines and Cuba were encouraged to retain their plantations that served the agricultural and sugar-centric interests of the US. Thus, under the Laurel-Langley Act which only lapsed in 1974, the Philippines was mandated to ship sugar every year to the US although at a premium price. The nabobs of the sugar industry who owned the sugar plantation and sugar mills and refineries in the Philippines were, in effect, primarily serving US sugar interests. At one point in the past century, the most powerful political force in the country was a so-called “sugar bloc,” which meant the industry nabobs mostly based in Western Visayas and Central Luzon.
The unqualified US support to the national government’s efforts to crush the Huk-led insurgency was partly an effort to protect the industry nabobs supplying sugar to the US and maintain the feudal structure that allowed vast sugar landholdings to produce sugar mostly bound for the US market but serving other markets as well. That also was the time the Philippines literally shipped sugar to the “seven seas.”
Even with its extraordinary influence on Philippine affairs, the US made no move to push the national government to continue its sugar-based ties with the Philippines after 1974. By that time, the US was no longer reliant on Philippine sugar with the availability of sugar from Latin American countries. With the US import quota gone and with no other markets paying premium prices for Philippine sugar, the glory days of the industry vanished overnight. It was downhill from that period.
The latest news from Negros island, the center of the sugar industry, is about an industry on an uninterrupted decline. News reports said that the sugar milling season, which usually starts on the first week of every October, after putting the mills and the more sophisticated refineries in tip-top shape after an extensive “reparasyon,” may just be a symbolic start, minus the usual sight of six-by-six and cargo trucks laden with sugar and jamming the roads to the sugar mills.
Reason: There is not much sugar cane to haul into the sugar mills. An insect called red-striped soft-scale insect has been ravaging sugar farms since 2024, with disastrous results for the current 2026-2027 season. As of Sept. 1, according to field surveys from the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA), a total of 134,386 hectares has been infested by the insect, with Negros Occidental, the most prodigious sugar producer in the country, being the hardest hit.
According to the Nacusip, the federation of sugar farm workers, raw sugar production will most likely be in the low 1.662 metric tons, which is short of the 2 million metric tons needed for yearly domestic consumption.
The Nacusip is proposing the exclusive allocation of the 1.662 million MT for domestic supply needs so as to prevent the massive importation of sugar. Opening the floodgates to massive sugar imports under the guise of filling the production shortfall would be another disaster inflicted on the domestic sugar industry and the 700,000 people dependent on it, Nacusip said.
In a sense, things are better off in RSSI-ravaged Negros Occidental than in the province of Pampanga, where the insect first struck. Pampanga’s sugar farms have so diminished in size that they cannot even meet the hectares needed for a single sugar district. All its three sugar mills — the Pampanga Sugar Development Corp. or Pasudeco, the Pampanga Sugar Mill or Pasumil, and the Sweet Crystal mill — have closed shop with Pasudeco now the base of a mixed development owned by a real estate giant. Pampanga’s sugar cane has to be trucked all the way to the Central Azucarera de Tarlac, which is now the only sugar mill in left in the entire Central Luzon region.
In a sense, the state of sugar affairs in Pampanga, though of diminished status, is better off than the sugar affairs of Zambales province. The only sugar mill there, the Carebi, was sold as scrap more than 30 years ago.
And with the literal and figurative scrapping of the Carebi, the once-thriving sugar economy of Zambales is now a thing of the past.
When old people like me — I planted sugar off and on for years before finally calling it quits — recall the glory days of the sugar industry and also recall that the US Conquista was driven by America’s sugar interests, we take little comfort in one of life’s truisms: Every glory in this world shall pass away.
