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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | A sugar rush -Harish Damodaran

A sugar rush -Harish Damodaran

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published Published on Jun 3, 2018   modified Modified on Jun 3, 2018
-The Indian Express

The result in the Kairana Lok Sabha seat bypoll, where ganna payment was the main issue, brought forth a crisis born of advances in plant breeding and boost in sugarcane production.

Not many would have heard of Bakshi Ram. Currently director of the Sugarcane Breeding Institute (SBI) at Coimbatore, he isn’t as well-known as Norman Borlaug or M S Swaminathan. Yet, the wonder sugarcane variety, Co-0238, bred by him has sparked no less a revolution, particularly in Uttar Pradesh’s (UP) ganna heartland. It is probably also a reason for the present crisis in sugar — that of overproduction and India becoming “permanently surplus” in the sweetener.

In the 2012-13 crushing season (October-September), UP farmers grew cane on 24.24 lakh hectares (lh) and its mills produced 74.85 lakh tonnes (lt) of sugar. In the current 2017-18 season, the cane area is only 22.99 lh, but production of sugar by UP mills has already hit 119.22 lt as on June 1. It is likely to cross 120 lt when crushing operations end in another week or so.

The above 60 per cent increase in sugar output, despite area under cane shrinking, is largely due to Co-0238. Bakshi Ram’s variety, first planted in 2013-14, covers 12.08 lh or 52.5 per cent of UP’s total cane area this season. It has led to average cane yields in the state rising from 61.63 tonnes per hectare in 2012-13 to around 77 tonnes in 2017-18. That’s not all. Co-0238 also gives more sugar from every tonne of cane crushed compared to other varieties. In 2012-13, the average sugar-to-cane recovery ratio for UP mills was 9.18 per cent. This season, it is close to 10.9 per cent.

The production revolution from higher cane yields and improved sugar recoveries — thanks to unsung breeders like Bakshi Ram — is not an unmixed blessing, though.

The sugar economy of India has traditionally been hostage to violent cyclical output oscillations. The typical ‘sugar cycle’ is one of three years of high production followed by two years of sharp decline. Thus, 2000-01 to 2002-03 were good seasons in terms of output, while 2003-04 and 2004-05 were not. The same pattern was repeated over 2005-06 to 2007-08 (good) vis-à-vis 2008-09 and 2009-10 (bad).

However, with advances in plant breeding — SBI and the Pune-based Vasantdada Sugar Institute are field-testing 20 drought-resistant clones in six locations of Maharashtra; these can save seven-eight out of the normal 34-35 irrigations over a 12-month crop duration (and even more through drip/sprinkler systems) — the old cycle of two-in-five bad production years is passé. Instead, we now have one-in-five or even one-in-seven bad, as seen from 2010-11 to 2016-17 (see chart below). Moreover, the recovery from declines is much sharper than before: India’s sugar output this season is projected at a record 322 lt, a 59 per cent jump over the 202.62 lt of 2016-17.

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The Indian Express, 3 June, 2018, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/a-sugar-rush-sugarcane-farmers-uttar-pradesh-kairana-bypoll-sugar-mills-5201826/


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