Glut And After
- Open market rates of sugarcane down. Maharashtra farmers have settled for Rs 2,650 per tonne
- Neighbouring states have declared rates of Rs 3,000 per tonne or above
- Co-ops haven’t paid farmers, debts
- M’rashtra pushing to allow export
- Centre clears interest-free loans of Rs 72,000 cr for sugar mills
- Ethanol production may be raised
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It was three weeks ago that Seema Jadhav, a farmhand, travelled overnight with her family from their village in Solapur to reach Karad to earn wages by harvesting sugarcane. But it’s only now that they have found work. She’s so busy, she barely looks up from the harvesting. “We’ve been sitting by the road all these days, having trouble feeding ourselves and our cattle. We were starving,” she says, tying the cane into bundles. “Work has started only now, after the farmers called off their protest.”
Hundreds of farmhands like her in the sugarcane-producing states of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka have suffered in the standoff of farmers with state governments and sugar mills over the buying price of the harvest. The protest in Maharashtra, organised by MP Raju Shetti’s Swabhimani Shetkari Sangathan (SSS)—an offshoot of the Shetkari Sangathan, founded by Sharad Joshi in the 1980s—was called off after it turned violent in Karad and protesters faced the police baton. Shetti agreed to farmers getting Rs 2,650 per tonne as the first instalment, backing down from the earlier demand for Rs 3,000 per tonne.
One tangible advantage farmers in Maharashtra have is that, unlike in other cane-producing states, mills here bear the cost of harvesting and transporting the cane. But overall, the one-and-a-half months’ delay in harvest caused by the protest, during which mills stayed shut and farmers refused to cut and bundle the crop till they got a fair rate, has resulted in losses for all. Seema has been as affected as Chandrakant Patil, on whose two-acre farm she toils. “Actually, it’s a two-month delay, which means I’ve lost an intermediate crop,” he says. “Five years back, when expenses per acre were Rs 10,000, we’d get Rs 1,500 per tonne. Now, expenses have touched almost Rs 40,000 and the rates hover around Rs 2,000. It just does not add up.” Patil points up the troubles even an efficient farmer like him faces. “My father and I have both won best farmer awards for maximum production, but look at us!” he says. “Some farmers have made Rs 1.5 crore selling two acres of farmland and are now earning about a lakh per month doing absolutely nothing. But look at us!” Farmers like him spend on sowing, maintenance, fertiliser and so on for over a year, and yet, after they deliver the cane, they have to wait for almost a month before the mills pay them the first instalment. The second instalment takes another four-five months. Patil says there’s no way he’ll let his son take up farming.
This year’s crisis wasn’t unexpected, though. Many farmers say they were preparing for a meltdown. Globally, sugar prices were on a downward spiral and there was little governments could do about it. International demand was falling and traders and governments had a surplus stock of sugar. On top of that, farmers ended up with a bumper crop. Too much to sell; too few buyers; ergo, low prices.
Cooperative sugar mills, once the pride of Maharashtra and now a tool in the hands of influential politicians, have had their share of losses during the standoff. “In the past month, we could have finished crushing and processing cane from 6,400 acres of the total 40,000 acres under cultivation. Now it is delayed. We have incurred losses of more than Rs 25 crore,” says P.R. Patil, chairman of the Rajarambapu Patil Cooperative Sugar Mills. Other mills, too, voice similar complaints.
Vikas Patil, a young farmer who was part of the SSS protests, reckons farmers’ losses in broad brushstrokes: “If you calculate our investment in fertilisers, pesticides and labour, even if we get a rate of Rs 2,500 per tonne, our average monthly income barely touches Rs 3,000. How will we survive?” Vikas and his friends are having a laugh over how they got beaten up by the cops during the protest. “As it is, no girl wants to marry us because we are poor farmers,” one of them says. “Now, some of us have broken limbs too.” Dark humour apart, they all seem eager to continue the protests—perhaps they feel it was called off too early.
Beaten hard Chandrakant Patil, a sugarcane farmer, at his Karad farm. (Photograph by Amit Haralkar)
But at a rally to celebrate the “success” of the SSS protest, Shetti had said, “I cannot allow any more violence by the police against farmers, especially after two farmers lost their lives last year. Even if I cannot get (higher) rates at this point, I will not lose my people. A tiger takes two steps back before launching an attack.” Already, many political parties are criticising Shetti for having beaten a hasty retreat: they think he could easily have bargained for a higher price. Other cane-producing states are offering more than Rs 3,000 per tonne, and that is also adding to the belief that the protests could have continued for longer.
“There’s no option—we have to get a rate of Rs 3,000. Just see how much work farmers end up doing in their fields,” says Raghunathdada Patil, an old member of the Sangathan and mentor to Shetti. “What we saw in Vidarbha will happen here too. Are we waiting for farmers to commit suicide?” In fact, farmers in Vidarbha and Marathwada are probably far worse off. Although Shetti enjoys support in numbers and continues to demand a better rate, Raghunathdada insists that the Rs 2,650 rate should not have been settled on. They should have pressed harder.
There’s also an ideological crack that has developed in the farmers’ movement. The original Shetkari Sangathan, spearheaded by economist and farmer-activist Sharad Joshi in the 1980s and 1990s, continues to advocate free market economics. “We don’t want any government intervention,” says Sanjay Kole, who remains with the original Sangathan. “Let the farmers make their profits in good times, and let them bear the losses in bad times. The lesser controls, the better it is.”
Amid these disagreements and disillusionments, farmers, who wish they were all together in the fight, are agreed on at least one thing: a dedicated policy for manufacture of ethanol from sugarcane and its use as automobile fuel. “If the farmers are given the option to divert sugarcane to ethanol, then demand and supply of sugar will also be adjusted. At the same time, they will make money from ethanol. In Brazil, the largest producer of sugar, they have managed to do it very well with ethanol being used as fuel,” says Raghunathdada.
There are many issues that remain: farmers allege malpractices in weighing sugarcane and determining quality (amount of sugar yield per cane). Then there are sick units belonging to owners with some political clout being sold for peanuts to others with more political clout. Some payments are still due from previous years. Cooperatives and private mills continue to have the upper hand. The embattled farmers are not thinking long-term right now. Looking at the situation in Maharashtra at least, they can’t afford to.
