Negros rising?
PART I

The title of this column could also be – Philippines rising? – but what intrigued me intensely was the headline of this paper (May 26, 2012): “Negros hits breakthrough with ethanol from sorghum.

Ethanol? The biofuel that is hoped to lessen the rigors of expensive oil and be clean at the same time.

For the first time, not only in the Philippines but in the whole South East Asia, ethanol has been wrested from sorghum, the sweet variety, at a cost that experts believe or hope is lower than using sugarcane. If correct, the item continues “the small planters in the hills, or land reform beneficiaries can participate and increase their income growing sorghum”.

What a hope; what a dream.

(Incidentally, some people in a barangay in Cauayan are extracting oil from Lemon grass or “tanglad” via gadgets made available by a manufacturer and backed up by the provincial government. This beats felling the trees for charcoal and gives farmer better income).

Now to the nitty-gritty. Will or can the San Carlos Bioenergy located in San Carlos City finally succeed in distilling ethanol from Sorghum in a cost less than milling it from sugar cane which it is doing now (a mixture of ethanol in our gasoline, 10 percent I believe is mandated by law). Again, how much more (or less) will a small time planter spend to earn a decent return from planting sorghum if San Carlos Bio-Energy starts buying sorghum grains from farmers?.

These, and a lot of other questions, are up in the air.

But I submit that since this boot-shaped island of Negros is a land of dreamers (not in the derogative sense.) Maybe it’s about time we stumble on a crop that will help us solve our problems.

Speaking of dreams, people in this island dreamed of making money from copper (too long ago to stay in memory). Then there was coffee , castor, and some other plants that fired the minds of the entrepreneurial class. The latest was the Jathropa (Kasla in the dialect) which was thought to produce bio-diesel profitably. (Maybe it costs to much to extra it from this plant because the government appears to have abandoned Jathropa.)

Then does one remember the gold craze that gripped us a long time ago. People flocked to the malarial mountains of Hinoba-an and dug the sand and gravel in rivers and streams. One scene that stays with me was watching and hearing a truckful of gold-diggers, most young people packed on the top of the vehicle . They were shouting and singing for the yellow metal on their way to the fan-off gold fields.

Then there was the prawn adventure.

The dream of making fortune from prawn darkened as the market in Japan collapsed because the Emperor stopped breathing. There were ruined businessmen (they say) jumping from the windows of the Riverside Hospital.

So much for shattered schemes, for unrealized dreams.

But now the whole country is jumping up and down with the newly announced GDP (Gross National Product) for the 2nd quarter. The figure is 6.4, quite a jump from previous figures in the vicinity of 4 and 5.

Will the Corona affair buttress the campaign against corruption? Will it incite foreign investors to sniff the moral climate of the country and make them say, ah, this is a place I can do profitable and hassle-free business.

If Negros can rise, then the rest of the country can rise. It will take some push; and will take sustained sincerity; it will take effort, for dreams without a follow through will just remain figures in the mind.*

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