CANE POINTS: Sugarcane and Sugar Manufacturing (Worker’s Insight)

For this edition, Cane Points shares its space to the voice of a sugar industry worker from the milling sector. His views shed light on some of the gripes of sugar farmers, particularly on low sugar yield amid the previous months’ low prices.

Here are his thoughts:

As a process man in the sugar manufacturing sector, I hope I can share my insights on what is really happening that affects sugar produce. This is an open topic and hoping you, too, can chip-in some of your valuable and relevant ideas.

First, sugar yield is determined by the quality of cane entering the factory (sugar process personnel are technical and scientific, but they are not magicians).

Second, impurities such as trash, soils, muds and sometimes stones that go with cane deliveries pull down sugar yield. Cane delivery analyses are derived out of filtered juices; clay soils, specifically, affect samples’ filterability, resulting in low purities and sometimes erroneous readings.

Lastly, we in the process house make sure that every drop of sugar (POL) contained in cane is carefully preserved and processed to produce the equivalent sugar on every ton of cane delivered.

The above factors are only some of the major things that affect sugar production. Other factors can be mentioned, but enumerating them would make this text a boring stuff.

You might ask, “What is the point in explaining these factors?”

The point is, both the planters and the millers must work hand-in-hand to address the concern on low sugar yield.

In the planters side, sugar farmers need to raise high-yielding cane varieties, implement best farming practices, and eliminate impurities, especially clay muds and stones, in cane deliveries. These two unwanted objects create difficulties and damages in factory equipment, thereby extending downtime and increasing increment repair costs.

In the millers side, we will do our best to optimize sugar production, taking into account that we will deal with fresh, clean, mature and quality canes, considering that mill share is dependent on the quality and quantity of canes delivered by our noble farmers.

Presently, sugar industry people are radiating shockwaves of discontentment, and we need solutions (little and simple by the day) on the industry that fed and feeds millions of families through the ages.

I cannot go further with other factors like sugar trade and government interventions, but I hope this short narrative could be of help.

Your ideas might also benefit our ailing industry, and I am hoping to hear your story, too. We need everyone, in the sugar farms, in the sugar factories and perhaps in the government if you can hear us, to contribute better ideas, innovate best strategies to bring back the glory days of the sugar industry to everybody and not only to the chosen few.

May our hard work payoff and may God enlighten and bless us all.* (BB)