Philippine sugarcane output has been volatile over the past few years, with a sizable drop in 2010 due to El Niño. Approximately 90% of the sugar produced in the Philippines is sold for domestic consumption with most of the remainder exported to the US. Philippine sugar exports dropped in 2010 when domestic production faltered, before recovering sharply in 2011. Import quantities, on the other hand, have been fairly low except in 2010. The following year, imports returned to trend as domestic production recovered and world prices increased.
Sugar imports of ASEAN countries have risen considerably since 2004. However, the Philippines exports very little of the commodity to these countries. Indonesia and Malaysia, the two largest importers in ASEAN, obtain most of their sugar from Thailand and Brazil. Brazil is the largest sugar exporter in the world with 37.6% export value share in 2012, followed by Thailand with 11.7%.
One of the problems of the Philippine sugar export industry is yield inefficiency. While the Philippines’ yield reached 61 tonnes/ha in 2012, this figure is still low compared to the top two exporters to ASEAN, Thailand and Brazil, who both had yields of 74 tonnes/ha in the same year (FAOSTAT, 2014). A factor contributing to low productivity is lack of coordination: cane farms and sugar mills are not always coordinated in terms of capacity or geographic location.
According to FAO (2013), the significant production growth in Brazil was due to the massive investment in technology that occurred in the 1990s, both at the farm level (in terms of the adoption of high performing sugarcane clones) and at the factory level (with the conversion of sugarcane into ethanol). Innovation is crucial to improve productivity in the s...
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...s in the Philippines and the rest of the ASEAN may potentially increase the flow of sugar trade within the region. The simulation results indicate that sugar imports in the Philippines increase by an average of 40 percent with lower ASEAN sugar tariffs. This higher import sugar volume however has minimal impact on sugar production. The local production of sugar declines marginally by an average of 0.6 percent. The composition of sugar imports in the Philippines changes as sugar tariffs are reduced. Philippine sugar imports from the ASEAN increase by an average of 136 percent while imports from the rest of the world contract by an average of 0.6 percent. Philippine sugar exports increase by an average of 0.7 percent. Its sugar exports to the ASEAN increase by average of 4 percent while exports to the rest of the decline by an average of 0.8 percent. (Cororaton, 2013)
Secondly land was a major thing that drove the sugar trade. In document 1, its shows a map of the West Indies. The West Indies is where a lot of the sugar was grown, Why? Because in order to grow sugar you need hot, humid climate, the West Indies have that hot, humid climate to produce sugar.
Jenkins, G.H. 1966. Introduction to cane sugar technology. Elsevier Publishing Co., New York. 478 pp.
Though sugar was rare before the Sugar Revolution, Europeans today consume the most sugar per capita. The Sugar Revolution did not stop in the Caribbeans; it spread to other places like India. Though the sugarcane originated from India, the sugar industry was further developed under the British Raj. India is currently the second largest producer of sugar after Brazil. Though the Sugar Revolution is generally considered to be an economic revolution, there were also many political effects. Without the Sugar Revolution, there would not be as many Africans, descendants of slaves, today in the Caribbeans. Without the slaves in the Caribbeans, there would have been no Haitian Revolution, no successful slave rebellions in history. With no successful slave rebellion, Haiti would not have been able to gain independence until the period of decolonization of the mid and late 20th century. An event did not occur in a local region does not necessarily mean that it has negligible effects in other regions. The lack of a bloody overthrow of the government does not necessarily mean that it has not brought change. The lack of precious metals does not necessarily mean that it will not contribute to the global
Despite the federal aid granted to sugar growers, not all sectors of agriculture devoted to growing sugar derivatives flourished. Domestic production of sugar cane increased steadily from 1982 onward, while sugar beet production stagnated (Knutson, 1985). Through time, the largest number of sugar beet farmers were concentrated in a specific West/Midwest region of the U.S. (Minnesota, North Dakota, Idaho) while sugar cane farmers were found in the Southeast, specifically Louisiana and Florida.
...hese will lay the groundwork for closing Brazil’s gaps in productivity and development statistics. However, the government may also want to consider balancing the factor inputs of its subsidized industries. Businesses must be allowed to capitalize on labor abundance and provide formal employment for Brazil’s working class, rather than incentivized to replace them with expensive capital, subsidized by the government with the highest public debt in South America. Even traditional development theories show us that this is a sustainable way to increase wages in the long term, as has been shown by South Korea and Chile. Though there is no guarantee the same model will work for Brazil, it poses an interesting question about the dynamics of the country’s development from a microeconomic perspective, and suggests a path to industrialization not yet fully embraced by Brazil.
By 700 A.D., it was seen that sugar was diffused to the Mediterranean region by Islamic expansion and trade as sucrose was viewed as an exotic spice and medicine (Nunn, Nathan). In 1452, Portuguese sugar production began on Madeira, an uninhabited island off the northwest coast of Africa. Indigenous peoples were the first workers brought to island of Madeira to work on the sugar mills, but the need for labor was too much. To get help with more labor, the enslaved African Americans were brought in and they became the main labor force for the sugar industry. By 1500, Madeira became the largest exporter of sugar in the world (Dunn, R.). With the success of the cash crop and the labor provided by the African Americans, sugar production was seen to have spread to other Atlantic islands; first it was the Canaries, then Santiago in the Cape Verde islands but these islands lacked the required rainfall for good cane culture. This is where the Portuguese, and then later the Spanish, Dutch, and English came to set their sights on other areas to continue this white gold sugar industry hoping to expand the production and gain
Slave labor is the final factor that drove the sugar trade and made it so successful. Slaves were the manual laborers on the plantations, doing the actual harvesting and boiling because the owner wasn’t there to do so (Document 8). Without the slaves working the farm, everything was pretty much useless. There is also a direct correlation between the number of slaves and the tons of sugar produced. This is shown in Document 9, where the island of Jamaica starts out with 45,000 slaves, and produces 4,782 tons of sugar. When the number of slaves increases by less than half to 74,500, the amount of sugar produced is more than tripled at 15, 972 tons. This clearly exhibits how slaves were essential to sugar
It was in 1640 that the British sugar industry began when the British acquired Barbados. Sugar production began to increase through the seventeenth century. The original consumers of the first sugar produced by the British sugar colonies were British themselves. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the consumption of sugar in British colonies continued to increase. The consumption of sugar in Britain is due to the increased production by the British sugar colonies.
Dating all the way back to the early sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sugar was being sold at jaw dropping prices at that time (Inglis, G. Douglas.). In Venetian and Sicilian regions purveyors sold extremely small amounts of sugar to wealthy elites, such as politicians, at extortionate prices (Inglis, G. Douglas.) This was mainly occurring throughout the sixteenth century (Inglis, G. Douglas.). This helped all vendors of sugar become one of the wealthy elites themselves. It all came to an end for these sellers once sugar was being produced by slave labor in the seventeenth century (Inglis, G. Douglas.) This was the cause of a great decrease from the exorbitant prices and allowed for the small middle class to now be able to buy the sweetener. The price decreased so much as slave labor was the cause for cultivating the crop that eventually not only the wealthy elites and middle class could buy sugar, but also the poor civilians of the land (“Sugar.”). The slave industry continued well into the late nineteenth century, but once it was abolished by all countries (United States being the last) for being immoral the sugar trade industry changed forever. Ultimately, due to the importation of slaves from mainly Africa and the specific sugar production techniques the slaves have learned, it enabled sugar to be the most profitable good in all of America and Europe at the time (“The Sugar Trade…”). This now
Sugar is one of the most consumed commodities in the world today, and the profits of it are significant. According to Larry Schwartz (2014) “Americans consume 130 pounds of sugar every year” (Schwartz, 2014). We must be acknowledged about how it all started, to appreciate how people lived and how they struggled to provide such a commodity. Sugar was a profitable commodity in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. The cultivation of sugarcane expanded to the United States of America, which brought enslaves from Africa to work on the plantation of sugar during the 17th century. Sugar was known as the white gold for its income, which helped the U.S. to achieve independence from Great Britain. Although sugar has the worst history, it is widely used for nutritional, medical and industrial productions, and sugar manufacturing led to an industrial development and economic growth.
The agricultural sector in Brazil has always been important for the economic growth of the country, and the exploration of the resources started as early as 16th century. Brazilian economy was almost solely based on the agricultural products and its export abroad until 1930s. This trend continued all the way through 1990s but two main products of 1990s , soybean and iron ore , represented 10 % of the total exports. 2 Surprisingly, Brazil was receiving food aid from other countries up until 1960s, and even after the country was a large food importer. After the 1980s the traditional agriculture transformed and became a modern, competitive agriculture based on science and research. 3 This was a result of the growing population with higher income ...
In the current economic times the development and growth of any economy has come to a near stop or at least to a drastic slow down. The face of the global economic environment has changed and many new countries are starting to change the way their country and the rest of the world does business. One such nation is Brazil, who has turned around their own economic troubles and is becoming one of the fastest growing economies in the world (World Factbook). Brazil has started developing its economy and using the opportunity to achieve a level of respect in the world.
The tropics are effect by many weather conditions which makes the jobs of farmers difficult. Overall subsistence and the GNP are effected by changes in weather, which for the most part is not always predictable. In a world that is divided up into the haves and the have nots, government influence is crucial in regulating practices and the overall distribution of wealth Despite this fact, programs implemented did not always succeed in benefitting the Filipinos. One major attribute of the Philippines is the wide variety of crops produced in this region. Crops which many not be able to grow during the rainy season may grow during in the period of December - May when there is little rainfall (and vice versa).
Suarez, Danilo. "The Plight of Coconut Farmers." Manila Standard Today 28 May 2013, n. pag. Web.
The Philippines has long been a country with a struggling economy. Ever since World War II, they have struggled to have a steady government and labor system. Independence did not bring any social changes to the country. The hacienda system still persists in the country, where large estates are farmed by sharecroppers. More the half the population are peasants and 20 percent of the population owns 60 percent of the land. Although the sharecropper is supposed to receive half of the harvest, most of the peasant's actual income goes to paying off debts to the landowner. Poverty and conflict strained the industrial growth of the country with many Presidents trying to fix the problems, but failing to do so. Factors that have faced the country are there is almost 9 percent unemployment, and the country suffers from the consequences of a balance of trade deficit. With the resources that the Philippines have, they are capable of pulling themselves out of the economical hole they are in and being up to par with their successful neighboring countries.