Despite lockdown, mills crush record cane

LUCKNOW: Despite over two months of lockdown due to Covid-19 in the midst of current crushing season, the sugar industry in Uttar Pradesh crushed 772 lakh quintals more sugarcane this year than it did last year.

Giving this information, principal secretary, sugar industry and cane development, Sanjay R Bhoosreddy said this year 119 sugar mills in the state crushed 11,015 lakh quintals of sugarcane while under normal circumstances last year the mills had crushed 10,243.96 lakh quintals of sugarcane.

“The unprecedented crushing was achieved in the interest of the cane farmers that too under the Covid-19 circumstances and constraints of previously unseen protocols such as social distancing and sanitisation,” said Bhoosreddy.

He said that while most of other industries were shut during the lockdown, the UP government decided to run the sugar industry uninterrupted to safeguard the interests of cane farmers. All the sugarcane would have perished had we not run the industry considering it a continuous process industry, Bhoosreddy added.

“Social distancing was followed and proper arrangement of soaps and sanitiser were made at mills’ gates and at all cane purchasing centres. Farmers were educated about handwashing and use of sanitiser besides following social distancing through distribution of pamphlets and the use of social media,” he said.

“Now, of the total 119 mills that operated this season, 94 have closed their crushing operations after crushing all available sugarcane of their area. Twenty-five of them are still in operations,” he added.

Bhoosreddy also said despite negligible sugar sale due to the lockdown, the sugar mills had paid Rs 5,543 crore as cane price to the farmers during that period.

Talking about fresh cane sowing, he said spring sowing of sugarcane was mainly done between February and April. Orders were issued to ensure availability of pesticides and fertilisers in all the private sugar mills and to give those materials on interest-free loans to the willing farmers.

TALKING ABOUT FRESH CANE SOWING, HE SAID SPRING SOWING OF SUGARCANE WAS MAINLY DONE BETWEEN FEBRUARY AND APRIL.