Haryana looks to boost sugar output

The Haryana Federation of Cooperative Sugar Mills is reaching out to the farmers to popularise Single Bud Vertical Plantation (SVP) techniques among the cane-growing farmers as it gives double yield and consumes 75 per cent less water and seed.

The Haryana Federation of Cooperative Sugar Mills aims to increase the crushing capacity and sugar production to 37.5 million quintal sugarcane and 3.6 million quintal sugar. At present, the Haryana cooperative Sugar Mills have a crushing capacity of 2.37 crore quintal sugarcane daily and crush upto four crore quintal cane per season. The ten cooperative sugar mills crushed 22.8 million quintal sugarcane this year and 1.9 million quintal sugar was produced. The total turnover of the ten co-operative sugar mills was Rs 760 crore. The sugarcane growing farmers were provided the best cane price in the country, which was Rs 220, Rs 215 and Rs 210 per quintal for early, mid and late varieties, respectively.

According to sources, sugarcane production per unit area can be increased by using new sugarcane sowing technique like SVP and space transplanting. The SVP technique is revolutionary as its seed and irrigation requirements are only 25 per cent of the conventional technique, but the normal yield is almost double ie minimum 550 quintal per acre as against the current normal yield of 275 quintals.

Annual return maximises with one full-fledged additional crop through inter-cropping in the three feet wide empty plane bed between the two rows. The technique will double the profit of farmers and also overcome the problem of insufficient availability of sugarcane because returns through this technique would be much more than any other crop combination, officers informed.

The government has motivated the farmers to use the SVP technique and it has been used by different progressive farmers in their 500 acres of land.

It was informed that out of total six lakh farming families in the state, 70,000 farmers were sugarcane growers. The sugar federation is providing employment to 7500 workers and engineers directly and 25,000 people indirectly.

It was informed that the sugar federation was taking a number of measures to improve the income of the mills like modernizing the plants, fuel efficiency, more power co-generation and ensuring sufficient availability of sugarcane.