SRA urges farmers to join block farming, assures aid, training

The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) on Thursday urged farmers to form cooperatives to pursue block farming for the sugar industry.

In an interview with Radyo Pilipinas, SRA Acting Administrator Pablo Luis Azcona said this strategy would help local producers increase their yield by 5 tons to 10 tons per hectare, referring to 30 hectares to 50 hectares of block farming.

“To make it more efficient, we need to group the beneficiaries into farms, a minimum of 30 hectares… The efficiency of a tractor is about 90-95 horsepower. That’s why if their group is that big, we can give them a tractor. We can also help them with technology because they will be able to plan the planting and harvesting into one farm,” Azcona said in mixed English and Filipino.

“We also encourage the creation of new cooperatives, to make it faster and to widen our coverage… We can upsize the equipment. Because in sugarcane farming, the bigger the equipment, the more efficient and faster.”

He noted that of the 390,000 hectares of sugar plantations in the country, 90 percent belongs to farmers owning at least one hectare to two hectares of land.

“There’s no tractor small enough for one to two hectares, so pagbigay mo ng traktora at hindi sila organized, pag-aagawan nila ‘yun. Kailan ‘yung schedule ng pag-araro? ‘Pag malaki