ON the current physical state of the shuttered Central Azucarera de San Pedro (CADP) in Nasugbu, Batangas, I have no idea.
ON the current physical state of the shuttered Central Azucarera de San Pedro in Nasugbu, Batangas, I have no idea. The giant sugar complex, which, at one time, was the biggest sugar refinery in the country — there are sugar mills and there are the more sophisticated sugar refineries — closed in early 2024 after 97 years of operations due to operational losses and the general downturn of the sugar industry.
I fear one thing, though. Non-operational sugar mills easily fall prey to rusting and rapid physical deterioration right after closure. One day, a sugar complex like CADP is the perfect exhibit of economic vibrancy and plantation luxury. After closure and the subsequent idling, the physical degeneration is both rapid and irreversible. I have this prayer that the CADP does not go the way of the storied sugar mills in my province that quickly degenerated into rusted hulk of steel after falling prey to the economic forces that pushed the sugar industry and its prized components like mills and refineries into either irrelevance or bankruptcy. Before one of the country's biggest developers took over the abandoned Pampanga Sugar Development Corp. in the city of San Fernando in Pampanga and turned it into a so-called Capitol Town development, the remains of the idled sugar mill were like props for post- apocalypse movies. Crumpled and rutting GI sheets. The hulking, rusting remains of the boiling house jutting out from a swamp the color of rotting baggage and mud and populated by rodents and snakes. The perfect backdrop for those Mad Max film locales. Nothing remained of the mahogany-floored clubhouse where the sugar planters of Pasudeco once celebrated every close of the milling season with imported steak and expensive wine. The same clubhouse from where the sugar nabobs plotted the future of Pampanga politics; and from where, right after the war, discussed with utmost seriousness the increasing challenge posed by Luis Taruc, Casto Alejandrino and the Huk movement to the sugar-planting feudal lords. Those same dystopian imagery of the abandoned Pasudeco had its nightmarish repeat after the closure of the Pampanga Sugar Mill in Carmen, Floridablanca, about three towns away from what is now the city of San Fernando. The grand stable that housed the Arabian horses used by sugar inspectors to physically check the state of the sugar plantations within the Pasumil sugar district was first to succumb to physical wreckage. Then the mill proper built by the Americans before the war and used as the main garrison for the occupying Japanese invaders was suddenly occupied by another occupying force: the junk and scrap dealers. Today, the mill site is a cheap development, with no trace of the plantation-era glory when sugar was in its boom years. All the four sugar mills of Western Luzon, three in Pampanga and the Carebi in Zambales province, have fallen prey to the sugar bust and junk dealers. Less than a kilometer from the now-abandoned Porac, Pampanga POGO complex are abandoned hog farms, each with a minimum population of 5,000, before they were shuttered for supposed environmental reasons. There is this deep suspicion that these hog farms that helped catapult the Philippines to the rank of 8th biggest hog producer were shuttered so as not to inconvenience the POGO people, which the government prosecutors now claim had powerful connections, i.e. Harry Roque, the former Duterte spokesman. Piggeries as sacrificial lambs to protect the POGO cash cows? In a country that actually neglects agriculture despite the big words for the sector's uplift, that notion is not totally inconceivable. The hog farms used to be prodigious producers, given the huge investments poured into them, from conveyor belts and Europe-sourced hog genetics and almost full mechanization. I was familiar with the farms. During my hog-raising years, I used to source gilts and boars from these farms to improve my own backyard operations. These abandoned hog farms are now overrun by weeds, snakes and wild dogs. The long span roofing is beginning to corrode. What happened to all the sophisticated equipment installed at a huge cost, I have no idea. What I know is this: With the area hosting them now slowly gentrifying — villages populated by South Koreans have been built nearby — there is zero chance that these productive and modern hog farms will get permits to operate and once more help supply the entirely broken hog supply chain. Elsewhere, my province — and this used to be part of the Central Plains, or the so-called 'Rice Granary of the Philippines,' — is a depressing sight to behold, especially during the summer when the parched land turns to brown and dust and the irrigation system either totally fails or underdelivers. And small farmers like myself suffer grievously. I still read when not farming. So, to the news story that the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Tourism — two critical departments whose excellence is on propaganda and hype and not on actual productivity and output — are teaming up to boost so-called 'farm tourism,' my initial reaction was to forcefully pull a clump of my thinning, white hair. In one's old age, expletives are a vexation to the spirit; pulling one's thinning hair is as visceral a reaction to that piece of out-of-touch news as blurting out expletives. Farm tourism amid the general deterioration of the state of Philippine agriculture and the overwhelming presence of the detritus from the sector's neglect? Just like Nero fiddling while Rome burns.
Tourism? Just Like Nero Fiddling While Rome Burns
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