The commencement of crushing in all the sugar factories of the district has brought cheers among the farmers, at the same time, the decision of the mills owners to adopt ex-gate system instead of ex-field has made the farmers worry.
The farmers have been demanding the government to maintain ex-field system which they believe is in the interest of sugarcane farmers while ex-gate would create labour and transport problems.
Under ex-field system, the mill owners bear the cost of cutting and transporting the sugarcane to the factories. This system helps the farmers as they need not bother about the labour and transport of the crop.
But in ex-gate system, the farmers will have to arrange for the labourers and the vehicle to transport the crop to the mills.
The farmers say that in ex-gate system, they face enormous difficulty in arranging the labour for cutting. The tractors/truck owners charge exorbitant money for transporting the crop to mill.
“Once the harvesting is done, we have no choice but to get the crop transported to the mill else it will dry up and lose the moisture which will not fetch good price”, said Mallikarjun Hugar, one of the sugarcane farmers of the district.
He said that crushing has already been delayed by two months which has reduced the moisture level in the crop.
It may be noted that legal tussle between the mill owners and the farmers on giving Rs. 2500/tonne delayed the crushing as the mill owners were not ready to commence crushing without legal fight reaching a logical conclusion.
With the High Court upholding the government decision to offer Rs. 2500/tonne, the mill owners had not choice to pay the same amount and start crushing.
Since most of the mills paid only Rs. 2300/tonne last year, the pending amount has reached to Rs.196 crore to be paid to the farmers.
Meanwhile, the farmer’s union who have opposed the ex-gate system, have threatened to stage dharna in front of Suvarna Soudha in Belagavi during the coming assembly session.
