The State Sugarcane Cultivators Association has urged the new Chief Minister, Basavaraj Bommai, to focus on the problems being faced by farmers and help them tide over the financial crisis.
Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, Kurubur Shanthakumar, president of the association, said that the State Advisory Price (SAP) for sugarcane for the year 2021-22 was yet to be fixed though the sugar mills have started procuring and crushing cane.
He said as per the Sugar Control Act 1966, the sugar mills are supposed to complete the payment to the farmers within 14 days of procuring the crop from them. But the government was yet to announce the SAP and hence the farmers are in dire straits.
He lashed out at the Centre and said that it has only raised the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) by ₹10 per tonne to ₹2,850 per tonne for 2020-21 which did not even cover the input costs while claiming all the while that the government wants to double farmers’ income by 2022.
Underlining the increase in cost of cultivation of sugarcane Mr. Shanthakumar said the FRP announced by the Centre in the past did not meet the cost of cultivation which was on the rise. The cost varies from around ₹3,200 to ₹3,500 per tonne against which the FRP for 2020-21 was ₹2,850 per tonne. Hence Mr. Shanthakumar urged Mr. Bommai to announce its own SAP for sugarcane. The Association demanded that the cost of transportation of sugarcane from fields to crushing units should be borne by the mills.
The association also reiterated its demand of making it mandatory for all mills to share the profits accruing out of the sale of sugarcane byproducts such as ethanol and bagasse. None of themills have done so though the law provides for it.
Though the Centre claims that the subsidy towards fertilizers, drip irrigation, insecticides etc was around ₹70,000 crore, the State government has imposed GST which varied from 5 per cent to 18 per cent. Hence the GST should be brought down to 1 per cent so as to benefit the farmers..
Compensation for crop loss due to extraneous factors such as floods, drought etc is not extended to sugarcane and hence the sugarcane farmers did not have a safety net. So the government should bring sugarcane under Fasal Bima Yojane and provide relief to the farmers, said Mr. Shanthakumar
