Agriculture secretary urged to address sugar price disparity
By Dominique Gabriel G. Bañaga

During a hearing conducted earlier this month, Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri made the claim there would be no insurgency in Negros if sugar industry workers were paid more. Over the past few months, the New People’s Army has blamed for fatal attacks launched across the island.
“If they go hungry because there is no food on the table, of course, they would take up arms,” he explained.
The senator went on to point, five million people are directly or indirectly affected by fluctuations in the industry.
As a means of alleviating the problem, Zubiri urged Department of Agriculture Secretary William Dar to resolve the matter surrounding the disparity between farmgate prices and market prices for agricultural products, particularly sugarcane.
He went on to note, the sugar industry accounts for almost one-fourth of the country’s economy, with Negros Occidental as the Philippines’ largest producer.
“What farmers are asking are only stable prices and, at the end of the day, consumers are also not burdened because it is no longer expensive,” Zubiri stated.
The senator suggested eliminating the middleman and coming up with a program wherein farmers can directly sell to major food processing companies./DGB, WDJ