The Uttar Pradesh government’s announcement to retain last year’s State-Advised Price for sugarcane has left both sugar millers as well as farmers dissatisfied and agitated.
While the Bhartiya Kisan Union on Thursday announced a State-wide protest from next week, the Indian Sugar Mills Association, said the proposed SAP was “unviable” for factories to start crushing. On Wednesday, the U.P. government declared Rs.280 per quintal as the SAP for 2013-14 as against the farmers’ demand of Rs.330 per quintal and the millers’ Rs. 225 per quintal.
“We are left with no option but to offload our sugarcane at the offices of district magistrates all over Uttar Pradesh. When the price of all commodities are rising and our input costs have escalated over the last year, the government cannot declare Rs.280 per quintal at last year’s level,” BKU leader Rakesh Tikait told The Hindu on Thursday.
He said the agitation would start with the DM’s offices and be taken to mills and even the other businesses of factory owners. “Millers cannot decide that they can kill farmers and continue with their other businesses by not crushing. The cane will either remain in the fields or at the DM’s office,” he said.
BKU Convenor Yudhvir Singh said that if high production had resulted in the current situation, then sugarcane farmers would have to think whether they should reduce output next year and keep the fields vacant.
“Whether production is high or low, farmers bear the brunt. Let them give us subsidy if they are ready to give incentives to millers,” he said.
The farmers’ leaders said that if the matter was not resolved to their satisfaction, the agitation would be brought to Delhi.
They suspect that the government and millers had formed a nexus against farmers’ interests.
The ISMA, on the other hand, said that with an SAP of Rs.280 per quintal in the previous sugar season, cane arrears had touched Rs.7,800 crore in March/April 2013.
Banks
“The average sugar price realisation in the last season was Rs.3,150 in U.P., which has dropped to Rs.2,900-Rs.2,950, resulting in a decline in the paying-capacity of the sugar mills. The declaration of SAP of Rs.280 per quintal will only lead to cane price arrears reaching Rs.13,000 crore in March-April, 2014.”
At these prices, it will be difficult to convince banks to extend loans or to ensure that mills start cane crushing in 2013-14, the ISMA said, adding that it would pay only Rs.225 per quintal to farmers this season as against the Rs.280 per quintal paid last year.
The Centre has decided to intervene and give relief to the industry through measures such as providing interest-free loans out of the Sugar Development Fund.