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| GM jute seeds may revive the ailing industry |
| Kunal Bose / Nov 17, 2009, 00:34 IST |
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The story of Indian jute, unlikeof the other two agro-based industries — cotton and sugar — is one of stagnation. The fact that production of jute goods rose at a disappointing pace in the past four decades to around 1.8 million tonnes is a proof that the industry, in spite of its nature-friendly attributes, has let much of the incremental packaging market slip away to alternative materials.
That jute’s mainstay now and at any point in future will be as a packaging material for food related dry bulk commodities is simple commercial wisdom. But at the same time, the industry should not let go of the opportunity to step up the production of non-traditional jute items such as soil saver, decorative fabrics and special hessian. In the absence of market seeding, the demand for these relatively new products has remained largely latent.
Thanks to a small group of mills, which remained steadfast in modernising machinery and equipment even when chips were down for jute, the industry is making about 85,000 tonnes of non-traditional items, where value addition is of a high order. There is, however, nothing to crow about the volume of production of new jute products, considering the size of the industry.
A lot of good will be done to the unedifying image of the industry and also its profitability if the majority of mills now start modernising themselves. But in order to facilitate this, the government must enhance capital subsidy on acquisition of new machines by jute mills. In monetary terms, the backlog in jute modernisation will be in the range of Rs 3,500 crore to Rs 4,000 crore.
Indian Jute Mills Association (IJMA) admits to the ‘limited use of advanced technologies in the form of ring spinning frames and shuttle-less looms’ in the industry, which has got much to do with the long periods of neglect in developing appropriate technology. In a situation like this, it is not surprising that man-machine ratio and conversion cost have remained static in the industry, except in a few pockets.
According to SS Kanoria, chairman of Ludlow Jute and former Ficci president, while cotton and sugar industries have made rapid strides taking advantage of friendly policies, jute mill capacity is stagnating at around 2.15 million tonnes with capacity use of 75 per cent. The country now has over 200 composite cotton mills with nearly 36 million spindles, 450,000 rotors and 79,000 looms. This apart, small cotton spinning mills operate over 4 million spindles and 157,000 rotors.
Expansion of cotton mills or of sugar factories – we made as much as 28.33 million tonnes of sugar in 2006-07 – became possible as domestic supply of raw materials rose in tandem. Thanks to the technology mission and growing use of genetically modified Bt cotton and HYV seeds, productivity of Indian cotton in the past few years has risen steadfastly to nearly 600 kg a hectare. By 2011-12, it should be 700 kg a hectare, though still 60 kg short of world average. But then nearly 65 per cent of 9 million hectares under cotton here is rain dependent.
As for jute, the area under the crop, including mesta, has actually shrunk since 2001-02 by 123,000 hectares to 926,000 hectares. What also paints the governments of jute growing states in bad light is productivity stagnation at less than 12 bales of 80 kg each a hectare. The demand for farm land for growing food crops and oilseeds is becoming so intense that there remains hardly any scope for growing jute in new fields.
So if IJMA’s vision to grow the industry at a compound annual growth rate of 5 per cent to 2.35 million tonnes by 2015, change the product mix radically with diversified items having a decent share of 15 per cent against 1 per cent now and raise revenue from jute goods exports to Rs 5,000 crore is to be realised, then jute farm productivity improvement has got to be given pride of place.
Keeping this in view, IJMA chairman Sanjay Kajaria says, in the first place, government agencies such as the Jute Corporation of India (JCI) should use its infrastructure to distribute certified seeds in sufficient quantities ahead of the sowing season. One way to weed out the use of inferior quality seeds will be to ‘give procurement guarantee of at least 5,500 tonnes of certified seeds’ to National Seeds Corporation and private producers.
Going a step further, Kanoria wants Monsanto, which has a towering presence in Bt cotton seeds business here, to develop genetically modified jute seeds. But good seeds will give the desired results if farming practices too are modernised. Why not ask JCI, which has the manpower and infrastructure but little work in hand, to reach out to jute growers with techniques like line sowing of seeds, fibre retting with minimum water and mechanical extraction of jute?
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