The promise of Muscovado

Most old souls remember muscovado as the lowly unrefined dark brown sugar that became obsolete with the advent of refineries that churned out polished white sugar.

Muscovado is a specialty sugar characterized by a deep brown color, soft sticky texture, and rich molasses flavor. It also comes in solid form, called panocha. Muscovado is making a comeback with the recent shift in preference among an increasing number of health-conscious people for organically grown food. Muscovado for the international market is grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides.

In other countries, there is an increasing demand for muscovado as a healthy sweetener, but locals generally still prefer the more familiar white sugar. The former has high export potential, but local production should increase with the appropriate support of the government.

Much of the appeal of muscovado, aside from being organic, comes from its being "unrefined"–the "in" thing for an increasingly health-conscious population.

Most producers of muscovado are small farmers in Antique, Iloilo and other provinces in the Visayas region who use a diesel engine-powered mill to press the juice from the canes. In the old days, this type of mill was driven by a carabao. The efficiency of this type of mill is rather limited at 60 percent extraction, and much of the juice is left in the cane after pressing.

The sugar is produced by boiling the cane juice in a kawa (vat or cauldron) until it reaches a certain viscosity or thickness. For some types of muscovado, it is mixed swiftly using clean shovels until it dries into powder form. For panocha, the syrup is poured into molds and set aside to harden.

Unlike brown and white (refined) sugar that pass through a centrifuge to separate the molasses from sugar crystals, muscovado is not centrifugal, retaining the molasses in the final product and thus giving it its unique flavor and aroma. Since the molasses contains vitamins and minerals, the "crude" process by which muscovado is produced ensures its higher nutritive value compared to refined sugar.

Muscovado production is a low-capital enterprise. It needs, on the average, three to four persons to mill, cook and package the product. The waste material (the fibrous part of the cane which remains after pressing), called "bagasse", is used as fuel for boiling the juice.

Moreover, farmers do not require extra transportation expense and equipment since they only have to bring the cane harvest to a local backyard mill, which is usually not farther than the next barangay. With these conditions, muscovado is better off produced at the village level.

Yet when something that used to be low-priced and considered sub-standard suddenly reappears in the organic products section with a prohibitive price tag, people come flocking to buy it.

According to a 1999 study by the Geneva-based International Trade Centre, the world’s organic food market is valued at $13 billion, with the main markets being the United States, Japan and the European Union. More and more people now opt for organically-grown and processed products, usually for health reasons.

Aside from being a healthy alternative to white sugar, muscovado is used in making local sweets and specialty breads and delicacies, and is a favored sweetener in making chocolate, its natural color and flavor allowing confectioners to do away with artificial colors and flavorings.

In Europe, a Swiss-made chocolate named Mascao (for mascobado and cacao) was introduced in 1991. It is made from "fairly traded" cocoa from Bolivia and "fairly traded" cane sugar from the Philippine cooperative Alter Trade. It also contains muscovado sugar from the Panay Fair Trade Center (PFTC). "Fairly traded" means that trade organizations, like Alter Trade, buy the sugar at a fixed price from small-scale farmers and cooperatives. The higher price at which the sugar is bought actually encourages continuous organic cultivation.

Fair-trade cooperatives, such as Alter Trade and the PFTC, have come to the aid of small farmers by buying their cane produce and processing them in a common factory, also creating employment in the local area. Otherwise, muscovado production remains to be a village-level affair, says Dr. Casiano S. Abrigo of the College of Engineering and Agro-industrial Technology (CEAT) at UP Los Baños, beset with a production rate in kilograms per day, using an indigenous method that dates back to the Spanish era, dealing with 70 percent purity of product for lack of proper quality control, and without constant means of transportation for the product to be brought to market.

What is the government putting forward? "Very inadequate support," laments Dr. Reynaldo F. Acda, dean of the CEAT. Dr. Acda intended to start a special project for a muscovado mill under the Agricultural Mechanization Development Program (AMDP), but could not muster support from sugar industry related agencies.

According to the UP-Los Baños (UP-LB) team of researchers, a muscovado factory with a 60-ton per day turn-out would cost almost a million dollars. However, with only P150,000 you can come up with a frugal version of one diesel engine-powered mill, a cauldron and two mixing trays. An ordinary farmer cannot afford this but the mill can be put up through a farmers’ cooperative as a common service facility.

Although muscovado is one of five organic products that the Philippines is counting on to hit it big in the international market, the outcome still depends largely on the development of the organic agriculture sector and the establishment of a research institute that will take care of support services, marketing and general direction for the industry.

Dr. Acda and his team are unfazed. They are working extra hard to come up with a technology package for muscovado, which will eventually be handed out to local governments as an option for inclusion in their livelihood and poverty alleviation programs.

There are other, creative ways to sell the product. A sugar grower in Negros has asked UP-LB to come up with a technology to produce lambanog- or rum-flavored muscovado sugar, while a Bicol governor has come inquiring about muscovado production as one of numerous technologies that he could bring back to his province. If properly attended to, these motivations just might propel the muscovado industry onto the economic highway.