What the Mill Owes You: How the Quedan System Pays Philippine Sugarcane Farmers

The quedan system is how Philippine sugarcane farmers get paid. It has been the standard framework since the Spanish colonial period, and the SRA still administers it today. The system works on a three-stage paper trail that starts when your trucks leave the farm and ends when you deposit money.

Most farmers know what a quedan looks like. Fewer know exactly how the numbers on it are calculated, or what they can do with it once they have it. This covers all three stages.

Stage 1: The Haul Ticket

Before a single stalk leaves your land, the hauling contractor should have a haul ticket filled out. This is the farmer-controlled document. It is your record of what you sent to the mill.

A complete haul ticket carries your name and SRA Planter Registration Number, your mill district, the crop year, the farm lot being harvested, the variety, the number of truck loads, your own estimate of tonnage, the truck plate number, the hauler's name, and a sequential trip ticket number. In practice, many smallholder farms in Negros fill these in loosely or not at all. That creates a problem at Stage 2.

The mill weighs your cane at the weighbridge. The official net cane weight on the haul ticket is the mill's figure, not yours. Your estimate is for your own records. Discrepancies between your estimate and the mill's weigh-in happen regularly and are not always the mill's error. A truck that was not fully loaded, a tare weight measured on a different scale, or cane that lost moisture in transit overnight all produce real differences. Keep your own weight records anyway. If the discrepancy is large, you need them.

Stage 2: The Quedan Receipt

After your cane is crushed and processed, the mill calculates your sugar share and issues the quedan. This is where most of the important numbers appear.

The quedan carries your planter details, the mill name, the crop year, total net cane milled in metric tons, a CCS percentage, the total sugar produced, and your farmer's share in LKG. LKG is a 50-kilogram bag. When a quedan states 1,400 LKG, that means 1,400 bags, or 70 metric tons of sugar credited to you.

The 65/35 split. Under SRA sharing rules, the standard ratio is 65 to 70 percent of sugar produced going to the planter and 30 to 35 percent going to the mill as its milling fee. The exact split is set by SRA order and has held close to this range for more than 60 years. The quedan states both shares.

What CCS Means for Your Payment

CCS is Commercial Cane Sugar, the percentage of recoverable sucrose in your cane. It is the single number that most affects your quedan value.

Philippine cane typically tests between 8 and 12 CCS depending on variety, growing conditions, and harvest timing. A field cut at peak maturity in dry weather routinely tests 2 to 3 points higher than the same field cut early or after heavy rain. The harvest timing article covers that in detail: When to Harvest Sugarcane in the Philippines.

The calculation the mill uses is straightforward. Take your net cane weight in metric tons, multiply by your CCS percentage, divide by 100. That gives you total sugar produced. The mill then applies the farmer's share ratio. The result is your LKG figure on the quedan.

A farmer delivering 20 metric tons at 10 CCS produces 2 metric tons of sugar. At a 65 percent farmer share, that is 1.3 metric tons, or 26 bags of 50 kilograms. The same delivery at 12 CCS produces 31.2 bags. Those 5 extra bags, at current Negros prices, are a meaningful difference on a single haul. Across a whole season of multiple deliveries, they are the margin between a profitable crop year and one that merely breaks even.

Sugar Classes and Why They Matter

Your quedan also states the sugar class assigned to your batch. There are four.

• Class A — domestic premium grade, sold through regulated channels at the highest market price
• Class B — export-grade sugar
• Class C — washed or refined sugar for domestic use
• Class D — raw industrial sugar, lowest grade, used in processing

The mill determines the class based on quality of the processed sugar. Most Negros cane from reasonably healthy fields produces Class A or B. Class D usually signals a quality problem at the field or during processing. If your quedan shows Class D and you expected better, it is worth asking the mill for the basis of the classification.

The class assigned to your batch sets the floor for your settlement price in Stage 3. Class A sugar sells at the weekly Negros bidding price for domestic premium. Lower classes sell at lower benchmarks.

Stage 3: Settlement

The quedan is a negotiable instrument. You can sell it without the sugar physically moving anywhere. A licensed sugar trader pays you the market price per LKG based on the current Negros weekly bidding rate, takes the quedan, and presents it to the mill warehouse to release the physical sugar. You get cash. The trader gets the bags.

Most smallholder farmers sell their quedan through a trader or agent rather than direct to buyers. The Negros weekly bidding price is the reference. It moves week to week based on national supply and demand. Some farmers hold their quedan for a few weeks if they expect the price to rise. Others sell immediately for cash flow. There is no universally correct answer. It depends on whether you need the money now and on how confident you are in the price direction.

One thing to be careful about: a quedan is non-negotiable unless properly endorsed under SRA rules. If you sign it over to a trader incorrectly, or lose the original before endorsement, recovering your sugar share from the mill becomes complicated. Keep the original quedan secure until you are ready to settle.

What to Check on Your Quedan

Before you sign or sell anything, go through the quedan line by line.

• Your name and SRA planter registration number are correct
• The mill name and crop year match your haul ticket
• Total net canes in metric tons is close to your own haul ticket estimate
• CCS percentage is in the expected range for your field and variety
• Total LKG produced matches what you calculate: tonnes × CCS ÷ 100 × 20 gives you total sugar in bags, then multiply by your farmer share ratio
• Your farmer's share in LKG is the correct percentage of total LKG produced
• Sugar class is as expected
• The SRA-stamped verification and date are present

If the LKG on your quedan is lower than your own calculation by more than a small rounding difference, go to the mill's planter records office with your haul ticket and ask for the weighbridge record for your trip ticket number. Errors do happen. Most mills will produce the record and correct genuine mistakes, but you need your own documentation to make the case.

Why Records Matter More Than Farmers Expect

The quedan system runs on paper. Every stage has a document. Farmers who keep clean records of their haul tickets, quedan numbers, CCS readings, and settlement prices across multiple crop years end up with two things that farmers who don't have records lack.

First, they can spot problems. A CCS reading that drops sharply compared to prior years on the same field signals something worth investigating: a variety issue, a harvesting problem, or possibly a weighbridge discrepancy.

Second, they have a financial history. Banks, cooperatives, and government farm credit programs increasingly ask for proof of income before extending loans or assistance. A quedan record by crop year, showing delivered tonnes, CCS, and settlement proceeds, is the closest thing most smallholder farmers have to an income statement.

For farmers delivering to Victorias Milling, URSUMCO, Hawaiian-Philippine, or any of the mills across Luzon and Mindanao, the quedan process works the same way. The mill names and contact details for all 25 active Philippine sugar mills are in the Philippine sugar mills directory.