Farmers slam UP govt's status quo on sugarcane price for 2022-23 season

Opposition says move will ruin farmers economically; meanwhile food secy says Centre will take a call next month on increasing sugar export quota

Farmers leaders and Opposition parties have reacted strongly to the reported move by the UP government to keep the state-advised price of sugarcane for the 2022-23 crushing season unchanged from last year. The current season started in October.

UP is one of India's largest sugar producing states with about 4.5 million farmers directly growing the crop.

According to some reports, the UP government has retained the State Advised Price (SAP) of Rs 350 per quintal for early sown sugarcane varieties, Rs 340 for general varieties and Rs 335 per quintal for rejects, for the 2022-23 crushing season.

However, there has been no official communication regarding the status quo.

Farmer leaders said UP, which produces almost 48 per cent of the country's sugarcane, has decided to keep the SAP at Rs 3,500 per quintal, which is the lowest in the country at 11-13 per cent recovery. Farmers were demanding a SAP of Rs 4,000-4,500 per quintal.

Professor Sudhir Panwar, former member of planning Commission and senior Samajwadi Party leader, said the UP government's decision is against the farmers and will ruin them economically.

He said that after considering inflation, farmers will lose Rs 245 a tonne more than they did last year. Farmer leader Rakesh Tikait too criticised the move.

Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Punjab and Karnataka fix their own sugarcane purchase prices--known as the State Advised Price, or SAP-- on the basis of input costs. Other states follow the Fair and Remunerative Price as decided by the Centre on the recommendations of the Commission for Agriculture Cost and Prices (CACP).

Meanwhile, in a related development, food secretary Sanjeev Chopra today said that the government will take a call next month on increasing the sugar export quota from the present six million tonnes for the current marketing year after assessing the domestic production.

The food ministry has allowed six million tonnes of sugar exports for the current 2022-23 marketing year (October-September), which is expected to see a drop in the sugar production.

India exported a record 11 million tonnes of sugar in the previous year.

"We have not yet taken a call. We are closely monitoring the production and we would take a call in March depending on what the final figures of anticipated production are," Chopra told reporters today when asked whether the government will hike the sugar export quota.

He said the sugar production is estimated to be lower in the 2022-23 marketing year because of bad weather in some producing states.

Recently, Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA) said sugar output is likely to fall 5 per cent in the current marketing year to 34 million tonnes, as more sugarcane juice is being diverted for ethanol production.

Sugar production stood at 35.8 million tonnes in the 2021-22 marketing year.

Coming back to the SAP issue, among the states that employ the mechanism, Haryana too had initially kept the state-advised price at last year's level. However, after farmers agitated, it raised the sugarcane price by Rs 100 to Rs 3,620 per tonne.

Punjab raised the SAP for the 2022-23 season by Rs 200 to Rs 3,800 per tonne, the highest in the country.