The Sweet Whispers of Sugarcane in Besao (A Journey Through Time, Soil, and the Question of What Grows Best in the Mountain Mist)

The Sweet Whispers of Sugarcane in Besao

A Journey Through Time, Soil, and the Question of What Grows Best in the Mountain Mist

By Ginawang | The Besao B/Vlogger

Imagine standing at the edge of a payeo in Besao, Mountain Province, where the morning fog rolls over ancient rice terraces like a slow-moving river. The air is cool, thin, and fragrant with pine. Your boots sink slightly into the mud between rice paddies, and just beyond the terraces, where the forest meets the farm, you notice something unexpected. Tall stalks of sugarcane sway in the mountain breeze, their leaves rustling with a sound that seems almost out of place here, nearly 1,500 meters above sea level. Yet there they are, green and thriving, telling a story that stretches back centuries.

How Sugarcane Found Its Way to These Heights

The arrival of sugarcane in Besao is not a tale of colonial plantations or agricultural extension programs. It is far older and far more magical. According to the oral traditions of the Kankanaey people, recorded by scholars from the Philippine Sociological Review, a legendary figure named Boliwan brought sugarcane tops from the upper world and planted them in the hillsides of Besao. The cane multiplied so rapidly that entire hillsides were soon covered in mature stalks. Boliwan then fashioned a sugarcane press from the body of a monkey he caught in the forest, using its limbs for posts, its tail for the handle, and its skull as a boiling vat. From the juice came basi, the fermented wine that would become central to Kankanaey rituals and celebrations.

This mythological origin speaks to something deeper than agriculture. It speaks to adaptation. The Kankanaey people, who have inhabited these mountains since time immemorial, did not wait for permission from lowland agronomists to determine what could grow here. They planted sugarcane in their um-a or swidden farms alongside sweet potatoes, corn, legumes, squash, and fruits, integrating it into a rotational system that respected the forest and the soil.

Historically, the old Mountain Province, where Besao was first recognized as a municipal district in 1904, was part of a broader Cordillera landscape where indigenous knowledge systems determined land use. The people of Besao practiced what they called inayan and lawa, principles that forbade harm to any living thing and discouraged waste. Sugarcane fit into this ethic because it was not merely a commodity. It was a source of basi for weddings, funerals, and peace pacts. It was medicine, celebration, and community bonds distilled into a glass.

Can Sugarcane Truly Thrive Here?

Now, if you are a modern farmer or an investor reading this from a city office, you might wonder about the hard numbers. Is sugarcane feasible in Besao? The answer is both yes and complicated.

Sugarcane is typically associated with the lowland plains of Negros, where half of the Philippines' sugar production occurs, or the wide valleys of Mindanao and Luzon. The Philippine sugar industry contributes roughly PHP 76 billion annually to the economy, with 398,478 hectares under cultivation as of 2022 data from the Sugar Regulatory Administration. Most of this is large-scale, mechanized, and heavily capitalized.

Besao offers none of these advantages. The terrain is steep, the farms are small, and the climate is temperate rather than tropical. Yet sugarcane is remarkably resilient. It can grow on slopes where machines cannot reach, and it requires less intensive daily management than vegetables. For the Kankanaey, who have historically maintained diverse swidden farms rather than monocultures, sugarcane provides a low-maintenance crop that can be harvested after several months of growth, processed into basi or raw sugar, and sold or bartered within the community.

However, the national sugar industry faces severe constraints. Average yields in the Philippines are only 56 to 60 tons of cane per hectare, far below the productivity of countries like Australia or Brazil. Small farms, which make up 84 percent of sugarcane growers nationwide, struggle with economies of scale. In Besao, where the average landholding is likely smaller than the national average of less than five hectares, the challenge is magnified.

The feasibility of sugarcane in Besao, therefore, depends entirely on what you intend to do with it. If you dream of supplying raw sugar to the national market, competing with Negros mills, the answer is almost certainly no. The logistics of transporting bulky cane from mountain roads to distant mills would erase any profit margin. But if you envision small-scale production of basi, artisanal muscovado, or value-added products for the growing tourist market in nearby Sagada, then feasibility shifts from a question of tons per hectare to a question of cultural value and niche marketing.

The Economics of Mountain Sweetness

Marketability is where the story gets interesting. The Philippine sugar market is heavily protected. Domestic prices are often double world prices, and import penetration is historically low due to non-tariff barriers enforced by the Sugar Regulatory Administration. This means that local sugar commands a premium, but only if you can access the formal market.

For Besao farmers, the formal market is largely inaccessible. There are no sugar mills in Mountain Province, and the inter-island permit system, while designed to regulate imports, also creates geographic segmentation that keeps prices inconsistent across regions. High freight costs and poor infrastructure mean that moving bulk agricultural products from the Cordillera to lowland markets is an exercise in diminishing returns.

Yet marketability is not only about bulk commodities. Walk through the Saturday market in Bontoc or the tourist stalls in Sagada, and you will see bottles of basi selling for prices that would make a Negros planter weep with envy. The value is not in the sugar content. It is in the story. It is in the label that says "Handcrafted in the Cordillera." It is in the tourist who buys a bottle not because they need sweetener for their morning coffee, but because they want to taste the mountain mist and the Kankanaey heritage.

The Payeo Indigenous Farmers Organization, working in Tabbaan, Barangay Payeo, has been reviving indigenous food systems precisely because they recognize that the market for authenticity is growing. While their current focus is on rice farming and biofertilizers, the principle applies to sugarcane. A bottle of basi made from Besao cane, fermented with traditional methods, and sold as a heritage product could command prices far exceeding what raw sugar would fetch at a mill gate.

Is It Making Money for the Farmers? The Hard Truth

Here is where we must step out of the romantic mist and into the muddy reality of the payeo. Is sugarcane making money for Besao farmers today? The honest answer is that it is likely making some, but not enough to transform livelihoods.

The traditional farming system of the i-Besao was designed for subsistence and resilience, not profit maximization. The um-a system rotated crops to restore soil fertility, and sugarcane was one of many plants in a diverse portfolio. This diversity was insurance against crop failure, climate variability, and market fluctuations. But it also meant that no single crop generated significant cash income.

In recent decades, the introduction of temperate vegetables, grown in newly opened gardens on formerly forested lands, has changed the economic calculus. Vegetable farming, while labor-intensive and requiring more inputs, offers quicker returns and access to markets in Baguio and Manila. The profit efficiency studies of smallholder vegetable farms, though conducted in Nepal, illustrate a universal truth. Farms closer to markets, with better information and extension contacts, achieve higher profit efficiency. Besao's vegetables, transported down the Halsema Highway, reach these markets more easily than sugarcane ever could.

Sugarcane, by contrast, requires a longer growing cycle and either local processing or costly transport. Without a local mill or distillery, the farmer is left to process juice by hand, a laborious method that limits scale. The money is there, but it is slow money, earned through patience and traditional knowledge rather than through the quick turnover that modern markets demand.

Is It Better Than Other Crops? The Wisdom of the Dap-ay

The elders of Besao would not ask this question in the way a modern agronomist might. In the dap-ay, the traditional gathering place where men once synchronized agricultural activities and settled disputes, the question was never "which crop makes the most money?" but rather "which crop serves the community best?"

Compared to rice, which is sacred and central to Kankanaey spirituality, sugarcane is secondary. The payeo rice terraces are not merely farms. They are habitats for crabs, frogs, and fish, and they sustain rituals that bind the community to the spirits of nature. Sugarcane grows on the um-a, the dry swidden land, where it does not compete with the water-intensive rice.

Compared to temperate vegetables like cabbage, carrots, or celery, which have become increasingly popular in Besao's newly opened gardens, sugarcane is less profitable in pure cash terms. Studies in Cameroon and the Philippines show that high-value vegetables like leeks and celery can generate strong net margins when market access is good. But these vegetables also require synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, inputs that erode the traditional inayan ethic and have introduced illnesses unknown to previous generations. Manang Pancy, a Payeo farmer, noted that when they depended on the market for food, they no longer knew what chemicals were in their meals, and new sicknesses emerged.

Sugarcane, in the traditional system, required no chemical inputs. It grew from cuttings, fed by compost and the natural fertility of the forest edge. It was intercropped with beans and squash, part of a polyculture that mimicked the forest rather than replacing it. In this sense, it was better than modern vegetables because it was sustainable, culturally appropriate, and aligned with the Kankanaey values of lawa and ayyew or avoidance of waste.

But in the modern economy, where children need school fees and elders need medicine, the slow returns of traditional sugarcane cannot compete with the immediate cash from vegetable sales. The best crop, therefore, is not an either/or choice. It is a balance. The wisest farmers in Besao today are likely those who maintain a small plot of sugarcane for basi and rituals, while cultivating vegetables for the market, all while keeping one eye on the batangan pine forest to ensure the water keeps flowing.

The Future of Sweetness in the Mountains

As you stand there in the payeo, the fog beginning to lift and the sun breaking through the pine canopy, you realize that sugarcane in Besao is not really about sugar. It is about continuity. It is about a people who have adapted foreign plants to their mountains, who have turned cane juice into wine for their weddings, and who have maintained a relationship with the land that is older than the Philippine Republic itself.

The future of sugarcane here lies not in competing with Negros, but in becoming something that Negros can never be. It lies in heritage basi, in agrotourism experiences where visitors learn to press cane in a wooden mill, in organic muscovado packaged for the discerning Manila consumer who cares about indigenous rights and forest conservation.

The sugarcane of Besao is feasible if it stays small and value-added. It is marketable if it tells the Kankanaey story. It makes money if the farmer is patient and creative. And it is better than other crops not because it earns more, but because it belongs here, rooted in the same soil as the myths of Boliwan and the wisdom of the dap-ay.

The wind picks up again, and the cane stalks clatter against each other like old bones telling secrets. You take a deep breath of pine and woodsmoke, and you understand. In Besao, sweetness is not just a taste. It is a way of remembering who you are.

References:

1. Philippine Sociological Review. "The Literature of Besao." Oral traditions of Boliwan and sugarcane origins.

2. TUKLAS Innovation Labs. "Batangan: An Indigenous Knowledge System and Practice on Pine Forest Management of the Kankanaeys of Besao." Medium, 2019.

3. Transformative Pathways. "Revitalising Indigenous Food Systems of the Payew people of Besao, Mt. Province." 2024.

4. FAO. "Will the Philippines Revert to Its Net Sugar Exporter Status?" Open Knowledge Repository.

5. Philippine Council for Agriculture and Fisheries. "Issues Paper on the Sugar Industry in the Philippines."

6. Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development. "Sugarcane Industry Profile." 2025.

7. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. "Profit Efficiency of Smallholder Vegetable Farms in Nepal." 2021.

#Besao #MountainProvince #Sugarcane #Kankanaey #IndigenousAgriculture #Cordillera #Basi #SustainableFarming #PhilippineAgriculture #Payeo #IndigenousKnowledge #FoodSystems #MountainFarming #CulturalHeritage #Agrotourism