The protests by farmers’ organisations, and the utterances and actions of the UP government in the last few days would suggest that sugarcane farmers in the state are facing a crisis.

But the fact is that sugarcane growers this year are going to get good money for their crop. A sharp fall in cane production has created a situation where mills are going to find it extremely difficult to get cane, unless they pay a handsome price to the grower.

Already, indications are that cane shortage has made the state administered price, fixed by the state government, irrelevant. In fact, having realised that cane at this price would not be available, the state government has told the co-operative mills they can give the farmers a bonus over and above the SAP. In this situation, it is pointless to talk of the Centre’s “fair and remunerative price”, which is much lower.

Against a record production of 1,350 lakh MT sugarcane in 2006-07, the production this year has plummeted to 980 lakh MT with the land under the crop shrinking from 26.62 lakh hectares to 17 lakh hectares. This would mean only 40 per cent utilisation of the cane-crushing capacity of the mills in the state.

The mills are expected to start operations by the month-end. The statehas 129 sugar mills, of which 93 are in privatesector, 11 in the public sector and 24 inthe cooperative sector. For the current canecrushing season, the Centre had announcedFRP of Rs 129.84 per quintal against sugarrecovery of 9 per cent while the UP’s SAPvaries from Rs 165 to Rs 170 per quintal, dependingon the quality of cane.

... contd.