The Hindu : Karnataka / Bidar News : Jaggery-making more profitable for farmers

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Saturday, Nov 06, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bidar

Jaggery-making more profitable for farmers

By Our Staff Correspondent

BIDAR, NOV. 5. Making jaggery in their fields is keeping sugarcane growers in Bidar busy these days, as the commodity is fetching the highest price in many years.

It is also proving to be three times more profitable than supplying cane to sugar factories.

The wholesale price of sugar in the Bidar District Agricultural Produce Market was Rs. 11 a kg while for jaggery it was Rs. 24 a kg on Friday.

According to estimates prepared by the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, a farmer needs to spend Rs. 800 to Rs. 1,000 to produce a tonne of sugarcane and the average yield per hectare is around 22.5 tonnes.

According to estimates submitted to the Government, sugarcane is cultivated on nearly 40,000 hectares of land, which forms 14 per cent of the cultivable land in the district.

High profits

It is said that farmers are now earning a profit of Rs. 2,000 a tonne of sugarcane used to make jaggery.

A tonne of sugarcane yields around one quintal of jaggery made by conventional methods, and the cost of production is estimated to be Rs. 300 to Rs. 400 a quintal.

However, the fate of sugarcane growers who supply their produce to the three sugar factories in the district is not the same.

In the last season, the factories — Bidar Sahakari Sakkare Karakhane (BSSK), Naranaja Sahakari Sakkare Karakhane (NSSK), and Mahatma Gandhi Sahakari Sakkare Karakhane (MGSK) — paid farmers Rs. 600 per tonne of sugarcane supplied.

This was apart from transportation costs, which depended on the distance of the fields from the factories.

While BSSK and NSSK crush around 3,500 tonnes of cane each day, MGSSK, which is yet to start full-fledged operations, bought only enough cane to crush on a pilot basis.

In the case of all three factories, payment was delayed by over three months.

According to unofficial sources, there are over 500 jaggery-making units in the district. Most of them are run on diesel generators and only 42 of them have obtained temporary power connections from the Gulbarga Electric Supply Company. Despite these extra costs, the home units are making a profit.

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Jaggery-making more profitable for farmers