SBACOLOD CITY - Diversify. Fro decades, this has been an oft-repeated but never really realized hope in Negros Occidental, the center of the country's sugar industry.

For while sugar, on which 80 percent of the province' economy depends, is unlikely to be dislodged as the major industry, crisis after crisis, the slow pace of modernization and a volatile market, where it is being challenged by cheaper alternatives, has kept local government and business leaders racking their brains to find ways to complement if not exactly wean the province away from sugar.

This time, they say, they just might have found the answer in corn.

On Wednesday, a one-hectare test plot planted to Chinese hybrid seeds provided by local firm Fu Hua Philippines Hi Tech Agricultural Corp. in the Cadiz City hacienda of planter Steve Lacson was harvested.

The yield, between 8.8 metric tons (mt) to 9 mt, has prompted Lacson to expand the area to expand the area planted to corn to 10 hectares.

The logic is simple.

Lacson said he expects a 100 percent profit on the P35, 000 investment on his test plot, the same capital he puts into a hectare of sugarcane. But while profits from sugar are almost as good, only one crop of sugar cane can be planted yearly. Corn, on the other hand, can be grown up to three times a year.

A similar test plot planted by the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist at the Pana-ad Sport and Recreation Complex in this city yielded 10 tons, according to provincial agriculturist Igmedio Tabianan.

Grossing P60, 000 at the National Food Authority support price of P6 a kilo, on an investment of less that P30, 000,it was not hard to understand Tabianan's enthusiasm for the crop.

Marketing should pose no problem, either, Tabianan and other officials said.

Cadiz Mayor Salvador Escalante, who observed the harvest on the Lacson farm, said the province's commercial hog raisers have to import 500 metric tons of corn every month, mostly from Mindanao, to meet their feed requirements. Those in his city alone, he said, need a hundred tons monthly. "This does not include the chicken growers and backyard breeders," he added.

Tabianan, on the other hand, said there are 14 feed millers in the province, which requires around 50 metric tons of corn daily, but has a production shortfall of 70 to 90 percent.

Wiping out the shortfall will not even begin to chip away at the more than 200,000 hectares or roughly 40 percent of the province's total agricultural land planted to sugar cane.

"Right now, we have more than 5,000 hectares planted to corn," mostly by farmers employing traditional technologies that yield an average of less than three tons per hectare, he said.

"Using hybrid seeds and improved technologies we need only an additional 5,000 hectares to meet our local requirements. Our projection is to produce 60,000 tons a year on these 10,000 hectares."

"Our strategy is, as much as possible, we don't want to touch sugarcane areas. We are targeting excess sugar lands not planted to rice and lands where corn is planted through traditional farming systems," he explained.

And even if other sugar planters like Lacson convert part of their farms to corn, Tabianan said the market remains large enough to absorb any excess production and assure profits even for smaller producers.

Yvette Lee, Fu Hua marketing director, noted that the country has a corn shortfall of 1.5 to 2 million tons.

"In the past, it did not matter since it was cheaper to import corn," mostly from China. "But two years ago, China stopped exporting, corn because of rising domestic demand."

This led to hog raisers demanding a lower corn import tariff last year.

The bright prospects for corn pushed Gov. Joseph Marañon to order test planting of the crop after former agriculture secretary Luis Lorenzo inked a memorandum of agreement with Fu Hua.

Just as important to local officials is the fact that, unlike past diversification efforts like prawn farms, which require huge investments in an extremely risky market, corn is a crop even poor farmers, particularly agrarian reform beneficiaries who tend to invest in the crop they are most familiar with - sugar cane - can afford.

In Cadiz, Escalante said land reform beneficiaries in barangays Caduha-an, Mabini, Celestino Villacin and V.F. Gustilo have pilot crops on over 30 hectares and expect their first harvest in a few weeks.

Although many small farmers remain skeptical about the crop, Escalante said he is confident that the documentation of this harvest should convert them to planting corn.

"The costs are very competitive. The labor is minimal [the farmers till the land themselves] and, since the target farmers are within the 2,000 hectares supplied by the 14 new irrigation projects set up by the city, water is free. With an investment of P20, 000 a hectare for each crop, about the same they spend on sugar cane, they can gross P40,000 to P60,000 three times a year, much better than what they get from sugar," the mayor pointed out.

So confident is Escalante in corn's prospects that the city, with assistance from the Second District congressional office, is setting up a post-harvest facility for drying corn and other infrastructure support.

Other northern Negros municipalities have also begun piloting in corn with equally encouraging results.

Escalante City executive assistant for agriculture Russel Benigno said the one-hectare test farm in barangay Binagyohan recently produced between 6 mt to 7 mt.

While Chinese hybrids appear to be the preferred seed material, Tabianan said he expects the market to have room for all, including local hybrid varieties. In fact, he said, "We have a corn derby in Manapla town where we planted a half-hectare each to one Chinese and three local hybrid varieties. We expect the results by November.

With the encouraging results of these initial efforts, it is not farfetched to expect that the vast sea of green of the sugar-cane plantations blanketing the province will soon be dotted with literally golden waves of grain.