If crop failure had led to farmer suicides in north Karnataka’s semi-arid, drought-prone Bidar district in 1998 and 2002, a bumper sugarcane crop for 2006-07 is now at the root of a spate of suicides in the district over the past three weeks.

The suicides have peaked with the approaching end to the sugarcane processing period at sugar factories—on May 31—even as an unofficially estimated five lakh ton of sugarcane crop is still standing on the nearly 76 lakh acres cropped in Bidar district. Despite the Karnataka Government’s assurances to farmers that all standing crop will also be processed at the three major cooperative sugar factories in the district, even if it takes a while, small farmers who invested heavily on the cash crop through borrowings from banks and moneylenders are not seeing light at the end of tunnel.

Since January this year, local authorities in Bidar have recorded 33 sugarcane farmer deaths while the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS), a farmers’ party, puts the figure at 44 for this year alone. “Till April 30, we had verified 29 farmer suicide cases in Bidar. This is a name-wise list. Since May 1 there have been four more cases. We are still finalising a report on the latest deaths,” Deputy Commissioner Munish Moutgil said. “Our findings indicate that out of the 29 suicides for which causes have been ascertained, 23 deaths are related to the sugarcane crop crisis in the district. The accentuating factors are many,” the DC said. On the surface, the suicides seem to be a result of excess production of sugarcane leading to a steep drop in the prices for sugarcane from Rs 1,750 per ton last year to around Rs 800 this year, a sharp decline in demand for sugar and cooperative factories reneging on agreements with member farmers.

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