Ihave visited the sugar factory seven times, requesting them to lift the cane from my field as it is getting drier by the day. But all my pleas have been in vain,” says a tearful Mukesh Naganna Valsange, a farmer at Teerth village, 20 km from Solapur in Maharashtra. “If the cane harvest is delayed any longer, I will face huge losses.”

Valsange’s is not an isolated case. Like him, thousands of cane growers across the district are in a quandary as sugar factories in the region have failed to lift the produce in time. The reason: glut in cane production, which the district administration pegs at 4.5 lakh tonnes over last year’s output in Solapur alone. The situation is even more pronounced across the state, with the total production expected to be 850 lakh tonnes this season.

A delay in lifting the cane results in a 50 per cent loss of yield, spelling doom for a large number of farmers. “I had spent Rs 20,000 to raise cane and another Rs 30,000 on water pipeline to irrigate it,” says Vishvanath Birajdar, a cane grower in Valsang village. “But now the factories are refusing to cut the cane and due to 16-hour power cuts I can’t even irrigate the plants.”

The plight of these farmers, particularly in Karmala taluka, is largely due to the political rivalry between two bigwigs: Ajit Pawar, nephew of Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, and former deputy chief minister Vijaysinh Mohite Patil. A majority of cane growers in the taluka belong to the Pawar camp. In the recent zila parishad and panchayat samiti elections, the Pawar candidate trounced the Patil contestant. The latter group, which runs a network of sugar factories in the adjoining Malshiras taluka, was directed by the state sugar commissioner to lift excess cane from Karmala region. But the orders have not been carried out.

... contd.