Sugar mills go high-tech to beat labour shortage

To tackle labour shortage, Maharashtra sugar mills have decided to take up mechanised farming and invested Rs 10 crore to buy 28 cane harvesting machines.

While 14 big machines were bought from Holland at Rs 70-80 lakh each, 14 smaller machines were imported from China at Rs 10 lakh each.

The harvesting machines are being used in farms in Sangli, Satara and Kolhapur — the three largest sugar-producing hubs in the state that were operating under capacity. The machines can run non-stop for 24-hours under ideal conditions.

“Maharashtra had tried mechanised harvesting of sugarcane in Pune district four-five years ago. But, the practice could not continue for long due to small landholding by individual farmers where these machines were operated. Later, the use of machines was withdrawn resulting into a loss for crushing mills,” said an industry official.

This time, however, large mills and co-operative bodies have guaranteed return of course, after a long gestation period. Hence, both farmers and mills are enthusiastic about machine harvested cane which is fast and requires less investment on labour.

Labour shortage has been a grave problem for the Indian farm sector due to several government-run infrastructure development schemes like highways, rural roads and ports. Large farmers and mills are taking to mechanisation to not only increase efficiency but to empty the fields faster so that they can sow other seeds.

At present, farmers require fast harvesting of matured crop to sow wheat, pulses and oilseeds for the rabi season. But, shortage of labourers have delayed harvesting of matured crops resulting into the extension of sowing season unnecessarily.

The Centre runs many schemes for village labourers like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) which ensures fixed minimum wages and guarantees good number of days of work in a year. As a result, labourers migrate from the farms to other areas. Mechanisation in farm practices will solve labour problem, said the official.

However, sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh continued to face shortage following a poor harvest for the new season, said Hapur-based, Vijendra Kumar Bansal, proprietor of Durgadas Narayandas, a jaggery manufacturing and trading company.

B J Maheshwari, wholetime director and company secretary of Dwarikesh Sugar Industries Ltd, said all crushing units, other than Dwarikesh Nagar, are operating with full capacity while this unit is facing shortage. “But, if the shortage of cane is due to poor harvesting needs to be confirmed,” said Maheshwari.

Sugar recovery in Maharashtra has declined by 0.50 percentage points to 9.5 per cent from 10 per cent a year ago. The 153 operational mills in the state crushed 15.6 million tonnes (mt) of cane so far this year, a rise of 450,000 tonnes from last year.

Around the same time last year, 133 mills were operational. Total sugar output in the country’s largest producing state was recorded at 1.49 mt as on on Tuesday, as compared to 1.5 mt in the same period last year.