by Gina Cariño
Home >> 'La Dolce Vita': Interview with a Sugar Planter
GC: Are you a sweet tooth?
AL: Not really.
GC: What’s your favorite dessert?
AL: Strawberry shortcake. It’s so dressy.
GC: Do you take your coffee with sugar?
AL: Only muscovado, natural sugar, the traditional sugar made with just plain sugar cane juice and heat.
GC: Are you sugary?
AL: No, not at all.
GC: Are you a sweetheart?
AL: Yes, I am a sweetheart.
GC: Do you have a sweetheart?
AL: I am unattached. Who would ever find me here?
GC: Where exactly is your plantation?
AL: In Talisay, in the Visayan province of Negros Occidental. Negros is the biggest producer of sugar in the Philippines. It’s Sugarland.
GC: Who started it?
AL: My great-grandmother started Hacienda Matabang over 100 years ago. My part is a small operation, about fifteen hectares. I just started last year.
GC: What does it take to run an hacienda?
AL: Capital, machinery like tractors, farm implements, and of course labor.
GC: How many people work on your farm?
AL: Sixteen on the field and one in the office.
GC: Are there carabaos on your farm?
AL: Two, for the two guys assigned to the tasks that need a carabao.
GC : Any studies and experience needed?
AL : Yes. I have a couple of friends that I consult with. And I am lucky to have a good cabo, a foreman in the fields. I guess my love for plants is a bonus.
GC: You like gardening, don’t you?
AL: Love it.
GC: Tell us about your garden.
AL: I collect specimens of bamboo and other plants. I did some garden-designing for other people too, including for His Majesty, the Sultan Qaboos of Oman, for whom I worked as a florist in Muscat. And I wrote about gardening for a Philippine newspaper.
GC: Back to sugar. What’s the sugar planting process like?
AL: Just like gardening. You prepare the land. This means tilling the soil, breaking the clods of earth, and lining furrows for the planting. We use the tops of canes from the previous year as planting material. These are placed in the ground and cared for with many things: water, fertilizer, etc. We don’t use insecticide because we have natural methods of combatting insects. The cycle is 11-12 months. Then comes harvest by hand.
GC: Do you have a distributor to do all the selling and delivering work for you?
AL: Yes, we all work with any of the planters’ associations recognized by the sugar mills. We take the sugar canes in big trucks to the local mills, where the canes are turned into sugar. The associations pay us in cold hard cash or they give us something called a quedan. It’s like a receipt. You can sell your quedans when you like, or when the price is okay.
GC: Quedan? From the Spanish quedar in the agreeing sense?
AL: Maybe. Hmmm, let me ask.
GC: Where does the final product, white refined sugar, go?
AL: Food stores, groceries, markets, wholesalers for bread and pastries, soft drinks, etc.
GC: How does the Philippines rank in world sugar production?
AL: Oh my, I do not know. We used to be the biggest in Southeast Asia. Thailand has taken over. The biggest Asian producer and consumer of sugar is China. And the biggest producer worldwide is Brazil.
GC: What countries buy Philippine sugar?
AL: The local market is the biggest consumer of our sugar. We also have an agreement with the USA whereby a small part of our production goes to them.
GC: In exchange for what?
AL: I do not know that protocol.
GC: How do you burn your energy?
AL: Exercise, I guess. I love walking the fields early in the morning. It’s so beautiful in the countryside.
GC: What does a sugar field smell like?
AL: Like smoke, carabao excrement, and freshly cut grass. I just love it.
GC: Besides sugar, flowers, gardens… what have you been up to?
AL: I’ve been shooting. I’m an extra in a movie about Filipino indies. Fun. I want to be a movie star.
GC : You lived in Hamburg and Paris. Your favorite European city is…
AL: Amsterdam.
GC : Your favorite Spanish city is…
AL: Madrid.
Ask Adjie a question here below. Adjie will answer.
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Posted on http://www.weeklyletter.com at 2008-06-12 09:00:00 +0200
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What a pleasant blessed life you lead. I was just curious – I have been warned off white sugar for medical reasons. I am told that brown sugar and cane sugar are good substitutes. Do you produce either? Good luck in your filming career!!
Hello Adje,
Having seen the Philippines featured on news here regarding the worldwide increase in food prices (food hoarding, shortages etc), I wonder what you’ve seen with your own eyes over there?
How fast is the price of sugar rising?
Hello Adje,
I’m very surprised with the carabaos. First I have had to search for what carabaos are. Carabaos are a domesticated subspecies of water buffalo. How do you use carabaos on your farm? Why haven’t carabaos been substituted by some kind of machinery? What about their feeding and cares? Is their use very common on Philippine farms?
Regards from Valencia
Miguel Ángel
Hello Adjie,
my father used to be an agricultor before retiring. We had olive trees and I remember he was always keeping an eye on the sky and on weather forecasts: rain, hail, freezes, etc…
I guess that weather conditions are also important to grow sugar cane even though I suposse these sugar plantations must be irrigated lands. Anyway, since everybody is concerned about climate change and global warming I wonder if those changes in the weather have had an impact in your latest harvests. Have you noticed anything special about that?
Quedan, cabo, hacienda, Negros Occidental. Lots of Spanish words in the article, remains of the Spanish domination in the Philippines. Can you spaek Spanish, Adrian?
Regards from Madrid
JC
Hello Adje,
Very Interesting your live in the Sugar Planter!!!
Is that possible to put another different plant in your cultivated plants? I suppose it depends on the kind of ground, doesn’t it? Have you ever thought to exploit your hectares for another uses?
Alberto
Hi Adrian&Gina,
It’s a very interesting interview!!
Some question Adrian:
Why did you decide to work in a sugar plant?
What is the difference between refined and brown sugar? Which one is more healthy?
Regards,
Leticia.
Hello everyone, thank you for reading the interview. Let me answer the questions one at a time. I am just back to my computer this morning since I was up in Manila for a few days. To Si Si, yes there are medical concerns about white (or refined) sugar. As far as I know it is best to use natural sugar, which we call muscovado. It is the pure brown and unrefined sugar. White sugar has a lot of chemicals used in the refinery process. But be careful. Some muscovado is made with white sugar into which they add all the ingredients that the refinement process took away!
and to Jeremy,
Our government is notorious for being corrupt so I cannot offer any opinions that are not already available in the press, but actually, sugar prices have not gone up despite fertilizers costing us almost more than double in one year, and costs of production getting higher now. I have no idea about hoarding but I know it exists.
To Miguel Angel from Valencia,
Yes, I am amazed at the carabaos too and am happy to see they are being used (and when they are used they are also paid for their labor). We use them in conjunction with the labor that is needed for the farm to work. I know it is ancient-looking but it is the way that we know best. It has not changed since 1962. We have tried to mechanize the farms but that’s another story. The animals are used to drag the plows when we need to break up the soil, or to pull the bull-cart when the sugar is harvested. The carabao is a real beast of burden.
To JC from Madrid,
Yes we do watch the sky to guess how the weather will turn out for the day. My cabo is an expert on this but he also listens to the radio for news about the weather. But yes, the climate is changing. Last year we had a drought for over 52 days. We had to irrigate near the 30-day mark and prayed for good weather but it never came. This yearis the contrary. So much rain, which is good!
I can speak Spanish but it is quite limited. I would love to learn how to speak your language!
To Alberto
Yes it is an interesting life, almost glamorous these days because of our Sugarlandia’s reputation in Philippine history.
We used to plant “monggo” or mung beans between the rows of the sugar plant but now we really just focus on sugar. I recall how during the disastrous years under President Marcos we had to plant rice instead to make life a little easier, and how much pressure there was on us if the price of sugar dropped.
And to Leticia, (nice name)
I decided to work the farms because for a long time no one in our family had been running it, and being a landscape gardener, I thought it would succeed and it has in a way, judging from the encouraging results.
As I mentioned to Si Si, brown sugar is the natural sugar. This is if it’s honest, if really only the juice of sugar cane and heat are used. It is the best way to use sugar, and it’s very healthy too. This is the way they made sugar when the industry started in the late 1800s. The Americans introduced refineries to make white sugar. Many things are added, even a chemical bleach to make the sugar white, and they use centrufugal force to spin the brown stuff away from the white sugar. This is called molasses.
It is best to use natural muscovado made by reputable companies.
Hello Adje,
Here in Spain we take sugar from beet plant. It is like a potatoe, but very sweet. Here our farmers cannot work with sugar cane because our weather. I think the way of refination must be very similar.
I don’t taste never sugar from sugar cane. Maybe do you know both, sugar from sugar cane and sugar from beet. Are they different?.
Regards.
Conchi Calvo
Hello Conchi,
Like you I thik that the ways of making sugar are I think the same, when I travel around Europe and have coffee, I suspect that the sugar I use is that which comes from sugarbeets. I notice that sugar from cane tastes a little more sweeter! I do not know though if they make natural sugar like muscovado from sugar beets.