She said the first commodity that was traded by ATC was muscovado sugar. Muscovado, largely considered as “poor man’s sugar,” was viewed by Alter Trade as an apt symbol of its vision to help the poor of Negros. The enterprise adopted the brand name Mascobado, “mas” meaning the masses – the ordinary people. Thus, Mascobado means “people’s sugar” in contrast with the sugar produced by the hacenderos and the big multinational milling companies.

The first shipment to Japan was in 1987, with its initial market being the cooperatives in that country. A year later, trading firms from Switzerland and Germany, and then Italy, also espousing the principles of fair trade, began buying ATC’s sugar.

Mascobado trading had impacted significantly in the development of an alternative trading system that seeks to change the socio-economic system prevailing in the country, especially in Negros.

The commodity had truly become a symbol of solidarity between Filipinos and Japanese, as well as other peoples, who are concerned with the environment and in changing the “exploitative social relations” prevailing in the Philippines. The demand for non-plantation bananas in Japan had grown continuously since the beginning. Demand has always exceeded supply. Mascobado demand had also been growing steadily in Japan and Europe.

Cooperative to corporation?

Fernandez, however, cited a number of bases for calling Alter Trade Corp. as “anti-people and a fake fair trade promoter.” The following are lifted from his statement:

* In 1992, the said NGO bureaucrats grabbed the
properties, assets and operations of Alter Trade from
the legitimate ownership of the accredited beneficiary
people’s organizations and small farmers cooperatives
that in 1984 had a membership of 158,000. They
converted Alter Trade into a private business
corporation with profit-making as their sole mission,
vision and goal. They created Alter Trade Foundation in
1997 to cover their private ownership and to control the
integrated branches of the different operations in
manufacturing, trading and finance. These criminal
manipulations of the NGO bureaucrats resulted to the
disenfranchisement and deprivation of 158,000 peasants
and farm workers of their rights to Alter Trade.

* Grave Fraud. First, Alter Trade Corp does not really
engaged in fair trade. The truth is, their sources
of “balangon” bananas for export to Japan and other
countries are NOT from the poor or small farmers
cooperatives in Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental,
Bohol and Mindanao, but from the small and rich
peasants including landlords. These bananas are being
bought from middlemen or through their buying stations
where individual peasants bring their bananas to sell.
However when the NPA meted punishment by burning
ATC’s hauler truck in Toboso last Aug. 13, 2006, they
hurriedly organized peasant associations that they will
use as shield and maneuver to preserve their interests.

* The mascubado products that they sell in the local
market and export to Japan and other countries are not
REAL mascubado nor products of organic farming. They
do not buy the sugarcane from the small farmers to be
made into mascubado products. What they do is buy big
volume of raw sugar from the sugar milling centrals and
convert this to mascovado while making a showcase of
planting sugarcane through organic farming to
demonstrate and fool their costumers and buyers in
order to hide the big volume of fake mascubado.

 Save as PDF