‘Sweet sorghum won’t affect rice production in Cabiao’

CABIAO, Nueva Ecija – The massive planting of sweet sorghum as a biofuel crop in this town won’t affect local rice production, Mayor Abundia Garcia said over the weekend.

Garcia said the areas planted for sweet sorghum used to be idle lands which are now being tapped for massive production, adding that existing rice lands will continue producing palay.

“The areas planted to sweet sorghum used to be unproductive and we are now utilizing them without sacrificing the areas devoted to palay production,“ she said.    

Earlier, Garcia led local officials unveil an ambitious plan to plant sweet sorghum in 7,000 hectares of agricultural lands over the next two years, which, experts said, could provide some 49,000 local farmers and dependents a whopping P1.5 billion in potential income per year.

Garcia told The STAR that the municipal government intends to put up a multi-stock distillery for sweet sorghum in the impact zone of the project that can churn out up to 100,000 liters of ethanol daily. She said that a Malaysian investor who is a close friend of hers, has signified interest to invest up to P500 million for the sweet sorghum project.

In March, Garcia, municipal planning and development coordinator Jose Hipolito and municipal agriculturist Ruperto Joson Jr. led local officials in harvesting sweet sorghum at a two-hectare portion of the plantation in Barangay Bagong Sikat and the response from local farmers was overwhelming.

Hipolito heads a research and study team for commercial-scale production of renewable energy source like ethanol in line with the national government’s thrust to tap environmentally friendly source of energy. 

The municipal government is targeting to mass-produce sweet sorghum in barangays Entablado, Bagong Silang, San Gregorio, San Antonio, Sta. Isabel and San Carlos.   

Garcia said the mass production of the crop could bring back Cabiao to its old glory days when it was the earliest site of sugar plantation in Luzon similar to Cabuyao, Laguna. Local historians say that Cabiao derived its name from the word “Kabyawan” which means grinding mill that used to extract sugar and juice it into molasses, from which several of this mills were located in this town long before the coming of the Spaniards and eventually improved these mills into granite stone mills.

Hipolito, a history expert, recalled that this delta-like town was once a thriving sugar plantation, but hard-headed local folk stopped producing sugar and shifted to rice and corn in protest over the landlords and merchants who were dictating the price.

He said that Barangay San Antonio (formerly known as Barangay Pantalan) was once an inland port of the early Malay settlement up north of the nearby Pampanga province, delivering sugar produce in the mouth of the Pampanga River in the towns of Minalin and Macabebe which had been the trade route before the advent of the Spaniards.      

Dr. Heraldo Layaoen, national program coordinator for sweet sorghum and vice president for development planning and external linkages of the Mariano Marcos State University (MMSU) based in Batac, Ilocos Norte with whom the municipal government linked up to pursue the project, said the biggest sweet sorghum plantation in the country is in Ilocos Norte covering 30,000 hectares.  

He said that over the next two years, it is likely that this town will emerge as the capital of sweet sorghum production in Central Luzon, noting that the local leadership is very aggressive in the pursuit of the project and has in fact procured seeds for the mass production of sweet sorghum. “In Cabiao, there is no more social barrier and sweet sorghum is accepted as a primary crop,” he said, adding that one hectare of the crop can get between 60 to 65 tons per hectare  of stalks which will give 2,700 liters of bioethanol juice.