Something about sugar : $b Its history, growth, manufacture and distributionRolph, George M. (George Morrison)
History
Something about sugar : $b Its history, growth, manufacture and distribution
Rolph, George M. (George Morrison)
Sugar
A measure was carried through the Philippine legislature approving the
sale of the unoccupied portions of these friar estates to individuals
without restriction as to acreage, and it was under the provisions
of this act that large tracts of land were acquired by the interests
connected with the Mindoro company in the San José estate in Mindoro and
by the people associated with the Calamba estate in the Calamba, Santa
Rosa and Biñan districts of Laguna province, Luzon.
Apart from these so-called friar lands, the public lands in the
Philippine islands are held for sale or lease subject to the following
conditions: Corporations can purchase or lease up to 1024 hectares, or
2500 acres, and individuals up to 64 hectares, or 158 acres. The terms of
sale are a minimum of 10 pesos, or $5 per hectare, 25 per cent of which
must be paid at the time the contract is entered into and the remainder
within five years, with interest at 6 per cent, or leased at a minimum
rental of 50 centavos, or 25 cents, per hectare per annum, leases running
for fifty years.
The Mindoro and Calamba companies, controlling 55,000 and 20,000 acres
respectively, and the San Cárlos Milling company of San Cárlos, Negros,
have erected the first and only modern sugar mills in the Philippines,
and they have gone into cane cultivation and sugar manufacture in a
scientific way. The management of these three enterprises has been
entrusted to men who have had thorough field and factory experience in
Hawaii.
Unlike the other two large companies, the San Cárlos Milling company
operates a _central_ pure and simple. The company owns no land except
the site for the mill and the outbuildings connected with it. It has,
however, acquired leases of a certain amount of railway trackage. The
capacity of the mill is 1000 tons of cane per day, which means about 125
tons of centrifugal sugar. It was completed at the end of 1913 at a cost
of about one million dollars, and the first cane ground was from the 1914
crop.
In the Philippines cane is not planted every year. Herbert S. Walker, in
his work “The Sugar Industry in the Island of Negros” (Manila, 1910),
says: “A decidedly large proportion of the total land under cultivation
in Negros is not replanted every year, but is allowed to ratoon, from two
to eight crops being taken off without replanting. This is especially
true in the rich soils of the districts around Ilog-Cabancalan,
Binalbagan-Isabela, San Cárlos and Bais. Theoretically, cane planted in
some of these alluvial soils, which are flooded and fertilized each year
by silt brought down from the mountains by the overflow of a river, might
go on ratooning indefinitely. Practically, the period between plantings
is limited strictly by financial considerations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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