Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh: Sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh begin the preparations for the upcoming crushing season. Usually, the season starts in October. Mills have commenced repairing machinery in the mills.
Sugarcane farmers, on the other hand, urge mills to clear the cane dues before starting season and claim that due to corona they are facing financial crisis. According to the state government, they are monitoring the pending cane dues. Recently, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has warned the sugar mills over delay in clearing the pending cane arrears.
Sugar mills claim due to low sugar sales they are facing a financial crisis and are unable to clear cane dues.
As per ISMA, Uttar Pradesh is estimated to have sugarcane area at 22.92 lakh hectares, as against 23.21 lakh ha. in 2019-20 SS, i.e. a marginal decrease by about 1 per cent. It is expecting a marginal increase in yield as well as sugar recovery in 2020-21 SS, owing to good overall standing crop condition and continued replacement of cane variety by high yielding and high sugared cane varieties in more areas. Thus, sugar production in Uttar Pradesh in 2020-21 SS is estimated to be around 123.06 lakh tonnes, which will be about 126.45 lakh tonnes (after diversion into ethanol) in the current 2019-20 SS. It is noteworthy that current year’s sugar production of the State turned out to be about 5 –6 lakh tonnes more, mainly because of much better yields as also cane diversion from Gur / Khandsari manufacturing units to sugar units, owing to premature closure of their operations due to lockdown.
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