Sumantri is no longer able to just sit and watch. During the past five months, Sumantri, a sugarcane farmer from Gondangmanis village in Kudus, Central Java lost Rp125 million (about US$12,500 at the prevailing rate) due to rapidly declining sugar prices. Farmers like Sumantri prefer to process their sugarcane into brown sugar in order to reap the maximum profit from the sucrose contained in sugarcane. However, since 2001, the price of brown