Madurai: The lockdown imposed to prevent the spread of coronavirus pandemic has severely affected the sugar mills as well as sugarcane farmers in Tamil Nadu.
According to the farmers, despite a good demand for sugarcane, the current crisis has discouraged them from cultivating the crop for the next season. The lockdown posed challenges to farmers including non-availability of cane harvesters, delay in cane payments by the mills. Farmers say they don’t have funds to go for next harvesting season.
As sugar mills are also financial scarcity, therefore, they failed to clear cane dues. The shortage of labour also affected the harvest of the crop in major parts of the sugarcane grown region.
As per news report published in The Hindu, T. Vivekanandan, Joint Director of Agriculture, said the officials were issuing passes to labourers, farmers and were taking several measures to facilitate the transport of agricultural produce amidst the lockdown.
