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Hail, rain and lockdown: Cane production, sugar industry power on
Barabanki/Bahriach/Gonda/Lucknow : The lockdown has brought most commercial, agriculture and industrial activity to a grinding halt. However, it is work as usual
Barabanki/Bahriach/Gonda/Lucknow : The lockdown has brought most commercial, agriculture and industrial activity to a grinding halt. However, it is work as usual for sugarcane farmers and sugar mills are up and running.
“Sugarcane harvesting, weighing, transportation to mills and cane-crushing has been going on. You can see that once we upload the truck with this harvested sugarcane, we will head for the sugar mill in Nanpara,” said Kesri Dayal, a farmer, in a Nepal-bordering Bahraich village.
Another farmer, Shuktisj Verma, in Masauli, in Barabanki, said: “Yes, this time, it looks like only cane farmers are unaffected. This is the only crop that has survived both – several bouts of hail and rain, and Covid-19. I think by next week all my cane would be transported to a mill in the district.”
A staff member at the procurement centre on the Lucknow-Bahraich highway at Tendwa Basantpur in Bahraich said, “We had instructions from the government to carry on till the end of the cane-crushing season with a rider that we have to ensure social distancing and sanitizing in all our activities.”
The sugarcane industry is an essential industry of Uttar Pradesh and is the primary source of almost 35 lakh farming families of the province. The state has a total of 157 established sugar mills out of which 119 sugar mills are operational. According to the UP sugar industry & cane development department website the total sugarcane area of the province is over 27 lakh hectare.
Department principal secretary Sanjay R Bhoosreddy said, “The sugar industry is the only large scale industry that is functioning in the state. And the sector has outperformed itself. Against last year’s crushing season, the sugar mills this season have already crushed nearly 300 lakh quintal cane more. Of this 100 lakh quintal was crushed during the Covid phase from March 20 onwards. Sugar mills in the state have crushed 9,320 lakh quintal this season and produced 1,054 lakh quintal sugar out of it.”
Of the 119 operational sugar mills in the state, three are of the sugar corporation, 24 are of the cooperative sector, while the rest are in the private sector.
UP Sugar Mills Association secretary-general Deepak Guptara said, “The government kept the sugar industry immune from the lockdown and we are committed to continue running till the end of the current crushing season, that is till the April-end.”
The crushing season is from November to April.
Guptara said that the industry continues to adhere to the social distancing and sanitization protocol that the state government had issued for the industry. He said that some private sugar mills have even housed their staff on the campus itself and have been providing them lodging and food to prevent any possibility of them contracting Covid-19.”
The sugar mills and the distilleries have also produced 11 lakh litres of sanitizers since the lockdown began.
