All about sugarcane: ‘Farmers should stop growing the crop’

HYDERABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party MNA Nawab Yousuf Talpur and the Sindh Abadgar Board urged the sugarcane farmers to stop growing the crop if sugar mills do not stop exploiting them. The farmers and political workers staged a sit-in outside Faran Sugar Mills in Tando Muhammad Khan on Sunday to voice their demand for payment of the government fixed rate of Rs182 per maund of sugarcane. “You don’t need to waste time, money and efforts to grow cane if the mills don’t pay you the right price,” said Talpur. “We can cultivate other crops.” The Sindh government notified the rate in December 2014 but the mills insist on paying only Rs155 per maund, citing financial loss of buying cane at the official price. On the other hand, the growers claim that they hardly recover the cost of cultivation even at Rs182 because they spend between Rs120,000 to Rs140,000 per acre which produces between 600 to 700 maunds.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 2^nd, 2015.