After a five-year break, Maharashtra has reclaimed its status as India’s top sugar producer, surpassing Uttar Pradesh (UP).
Maharashtra’s sugar commissioner, Shekhar Gaikwad, forecasts 138 lakh tonnes of output for the crushing year 2021-22 (October-September) (lt). This is a new high, surpassing the previous record of 107.21 lt in 2018-19.
The National Federation of Cooperative Sugar Factories’ managing director, Prakash Naiknavare, credits the record production to three causes.
The first is Maharashtra’s abundant rainfall since the start of the southwest monsoon season in 2019. (June-September). Farmers have been encouraged to grow more sugarcane due to the filling of reservoirs and recharged groundwater aquifers. Sugarcane is a crop that lasts 12-18 months. In 2021-22, the benefits of ample water and enlarged acreage were fully realised.
The second benefit is increased yields as a result of farmers taking greater care of their crops. Vinod Momale, who cultivates sugarcane on 11 of his entire 40-acre holding in Gurdhal village in Latur district’s Deoni taluka, is an example of this. This year, he obtained a 60-tonne average per-acre cane crop, compared to 50 tonnes in 2020-21.
However, there is a third factor driving Maharashtra’s sugar production to new heights. It has to do with a significant increase in the growing of “unregistered” cane. In 2020-21, the state reported planting cane on a total area of 11.42 lakh hectares (lh). While the sugar commissioner’s office estimates the area to be 12.4 lh this year, millers estimate it to be at least one lh higher – and this is cane, that farmers haven’t “registered” to provide to any plant.
Maharashtra isn’t the only state affected. This year, Karnataka is on track to produce a record 60 lt of sugar, while Gujarat’s 12 lt would be the most since the 12.35 lt produced in 2010-11. As seen in the table, output in all three states has rebounded dramatically from drought-affected levels in 2019-20, a year in which UP’s output reached a record high of 126.37 lt.
Bakshi Ram, the former head of the Sugarcane Breeding Institute in Coimbatore, explains why sugar output in Uttar Pradesh is expected to decline after 2019-20.
The first is that mills are diverting an anticipated 12.60 lt equivalent of sugar from cane crushing for ethanol production this year, compared to 7.19 lt in 2020-21, 4.81 lt in 2019-20, and 0.31 lt in 2018-19. In reality, Uttar Pradesh has become India’s top ethanol producer, with the greatest ethanol-to-petrol ratio of any state.
The second factor is crop loss due to excessive rainfall and flooding in several low-lying cane-growing districts in eastern Uttar Pradesh. The third reason is because a single variety, Co-0238, is planted on around 87 percent of UP’s cane land. While Bakshi Ram’s variety helped enhance cane yields and sugar recovery in Uttar Pradesh in 2013-14 (https://bit.ly/3GtmVO2), it is now susceptible to red rot fungal disease.
Sugar output in Uttar Pradesh fell to a five-year low in 2021-22, whereas Maharashtra and Karnataka’s sugar output soared to all-time highs. According to Naiknavare, this has resulted in a record production of 355.5 lt for India.
