As the milling season begins across Negros Island, a wave of anger and protest rises from the ranks of planters and sugarcane workers. The farmgate price of sugar has plummeted to a dismal ₱2,250-₱2,270 per bag, a catastrophic drop from last season’s ₱3,700. This current price point is not merely lower; it is critically below the cost of production and the essential inputs required for sugarcane to thrive, pushing planters into an unsustainable economic sinkhole.

This decline doesn’t just hurt planters. Among the affected, it is the sacadas (sugarcane workers) who bear the brunt of such situation, as the price collapse translates directly and immediately into a severe cut in their already meager seasonal incomes. For these sugarcane workers and their families, the loss of income means less money for food, medicine, and education.

Behind this price collapse is the betrayal of the reactionary government, executed through the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA). The SRA authorized the importation of a staggering 424,000 metric tons of sugar, despite its own data indicating that domestic supply remains sufficient.

This blatant disregard for local producers in favor of foreign sugar imports is not simply incompetence—it is a direct result of the continuing stranglehold of neoliberalism on the Philippine economy, as evident in its export-oriented, import-dependent character. For decades, this has turned the Philippines into a dumping ground for surplus agricultural products from imperialist countries like the U.S., where massive subsidies allow them to offload sugar and other commodities at artificially low prices. Meanwhile, local producers are left to fend for themselves against rising input costs, no guaranteed markets, and a government that has fully abandoned them.

Thus, the PKM-South Central Negros calls for the immediate and decisive scrapping of neoliberal policies especially the regulation of sugar prices. We also assert that genuine progress for all can only be achieved when genuine agrarian reform is implemented and national industrialization is established.