Other Uses of Sugarcane: How Philippine Farmers Can Earn More From the Same Field

Most smallholder sugarcane farmers in Negros have one income event per year: the quedan. The mill takes the cane, issues a quedan slip, and the farmer receives either a share of the sugar or its peso equivalent. That's it. Everything else on the farm is a cost.

That model is not wrong, but it leaves income on the table. Sugarcane produces more than mill sugar. The tops and leaves, the fallow months, the plant's juice, the quality of its cuttings as seed material: each of these has a market, and some of them require almost no additional investment to access. Others require capital but return three times what mill cane does per tonne.

What follows covers the options that have real Philippine data behind them. Not theoretical global models. Not what Brazil does at industrial scale. What a farmer on a five- to ten-hectare holding in Negros Oriental can actually do.

Muscovado: The Highest Income Potential

Muscovado is unrefined whole cane sugar produced at farm or cooperative scale. The Philippines is one of the few countries where a domestic market for muscovado exists alongside an export market, and the farmgate price difference versus raw mill cane is large.

PSA data from 2023 puts muscovado farmgate price at ₱77.63 per kilogram. At 10 percent recovery, one tonne of cane produces roughly 90 to 100 kilograms of muscovado. Gross value per tonne of cane: ₱7,763. Net, after processing costs of around ₱18 per kilogram: approximately ₱5,366 per tonne of cane processed. Compare that to ₱2,200 to ₱2,500 per tonne at the mill gate. The gap is real and consistently documented.

The barrier is capital. A small muscovado processing setup costs ₱150,000 to ₱500,000 depending on scale, which is not reachable for most individual smallholders. The cooperative route is what makes this work. SRA has a muscovado development program that includes equipment grants and GMP certification support for export eligibility. DTI Negros Occidental has connected muscovado cooperatives to export buyers. These programs exist; the practical gap is that most farmers in Negros Oriental are not in a cooperative structured around muscovado.

If your cooperative or farmers association has not looked at this, the SRA Research and Development Division is the right starting point. The income case is strong. The infrastructure case depends on your area and how many farms can pool together to make the equipment cost work.

Cane Tops and Leaves: Income From What You're Burning

Every sugarcane harvest produces tops and leaves. On a typical 60 tonne-per-hectare crop, that is roughly 9 to 16 tonnes of green material per hectare. Most farms in Negros burn it or leave it in the field. Neither of those is wrong agronomically, but both ignore what that material is worth to cattle and goat raisers in the same area.

Sugarcane tops are a proven ruminant feed. When ensiled, they compare to maize silage for dry matter and digestibility. The dry season, January through May, is when fodder is scarce and livestock raisers in Negros are paying for roughage. Sugarcane harvests in many areas land close enough to the dry season that the tops are available at exactly the right time.

Fresh tops sell locally at ₱3 to ₱5 per kilogram, based on silage market pricing from India's Karnataka region, which is the most consistent published reference for this market. Philippine-specific pricing is less documented but consistent with that range from cooperative contacts in Negros. At 10 tonnes of tops per hectare sold at ₱3 per kilogram, that is ₱30,000 per hectare from material that currently has no income attached to it.

You don't need a silage machine to start. Find one or two cattle or goat raisers within five kilometers of your farm before your next harvest. Arrange a fresh sale. The logistics are simple: they collect, you stack. The market is not guaranteed everywhere in Negros, but it exists in most areas with significant ruminant livestock. FAO data shows the Philippines produces 4.7 million metric tonnes of sugarcane tops annually, the majority of which is burned or abandoned.

Certified Seed Cane: Post-RSSI Demand

The RSSI (red-striped soft scale insect, Pulvinaria tenuivalvata) outbreak that spread across Negros and reached Mindanao in 2025 and 2026 did something specific to the planting material market: it destroyed a significant portion of the healthy cane stocks farmers would have used for replanting. Demand for certified, disease-free seed cane has gone up.

SRA-certified seed cane sells at ₱4,000 to ₱6,000 per tonne, versus ₱2,200 to ₱2,500 at the mill. The process involves dedicating a block of your farm as a nursery, keeping it under SRA inspection visits, and maintaining clean planting records. SRA-Bais in Negros Oriental handles Region 7 certification.

On a dedicated 3 ha certified nursery block at ₱5,000 per tonne and 60 tonnes per hectare, the income over mill price is roughly ₱468,000 additional per cycle. That calculation assumes you have a block that escaped RSSI and can demonstrate clean material. If your farm was affected, this is not currently an option. If it was not, you may have something your neighbors urgently need.

Intercrops During Fallow: Formalizing What Already Happens

Sugarcane has a fallow period between harvest and when the next plant crop establishes properly. Many smallholders in Negros already plant mungbean during this window. The practice is common enough that it barely needs explaining to most farmers. What needs explaining is why it should be documented.

Mungbean returns ₱20,000 to ₱30,000 net per hectare on a 75-day cycle. Sweet potato can reach ₱50,000 to ₱120,000 depending on variety and market. ICAR research from India on mungbean-sugarcane intercrop combinations also shows a 15 to 20 percent improvement in ratoon cane yield in the subsequent cycle, because mungbean fixes nitrogen back into the soil. The agronomic benefit compounds the income benefit.

The DA Bureau of Plant Industry has certified mungbean seed available through Agricultural Training Institute extension offices and runs an intercropping support program under DA-PCAF. Most farmers doing this informally are not accessing those programs because there is no formal record of the practice on their farm. A simple ledger entry per cycle creates the documentation needed to apply for input credit through a cooperative or DA extension support.

Sugarcane Vinegar: Low Capital, Real Market

Sugarcane vinegar (Sukang Iloko is the established Ilocos Norte version) is produced through a two-stage fermentation: cane juice to basi, then basi to vinegar at 5 percent acidity. SRA Research and Development has published a packaged two-week production technology. The equipment cost is low: food-grade containers, minimal labor, and time. Local retail price for sugarcane vinegar is ₱40 to ₱50 per 750ml bottle, with export and diaspora market pricing in the United States reaching the equivalent of ₱200 per litre.

The math per tonne of cane is around ₱4,000 gross from vinegar versus ₱2,200 to ₱2,500 at the mill. The barrier here is FDA registration for commercial sale, which costs ₱5,000 to ₱15,000 for initial registration plus a facility inspection. That is manageable for a small batch operation. DTI's One Town One Product program has supported artisanal vinegar producers in the past and can provide branding support and trade fair access for a Negros version.

The Long View: Carbon Records and What Comes Next

There is one income stream that is not available to Philippine farmers today but is worth preparing for now. Australia's sugarcane sector earns AUD 38 to 70 per tonne of CO2 avoided through green harvesting, the practice of cutting without burning. The Philippines has no equivalent carbon credit scheme yet. DENR is developing a national carbon market framework in 2025 and 2026, with no operational scheme for agriculture currently active.

What farmers can do now is position for when a scheme does exist. Stopping burning is the practice change. Keeping records of which fields were harvested green and when is the documentation requirement. Any future carbon scheme in the Philippines will require Measurement, Reporting, and Verification data going back at least two to three years. Farmers who have maintained field-level records during those years will be eligible to apply. Farmers who have no records will have to start from zero when the scheme finally opens.

That is the less obvious reason why digital farm records matter beyond daily field management. The quedan income you can calculate today. The carbon income is not quantifiable yet for the Philippines. But the data collection that unlocks it is the same data collection that makes your farm run better now.