Sugar cartels and plight of sugarcane growers

Struggling against economic recession on macro level, the country’s economic managers most often remain oblivious to micro management of cartels to usurp the hard earned money of the small farmers. Like many other cartels proving lethal to country’s economic growth and tax collection, the sugar cartels are none to less in fleecing small farmers especially sugarcane growers money. Either it is in the name of delayed payments or making the farmers unnecessarily wait for their turn to offload their sugarcane at mills or hoarding the commodity at warehouses for extra charges from consumers these cartels continue to mint money from poor farmers and consumers. With majority among them are renowned politicians or businessmen, they usually use their influence to get away with the poor’s money. “We are always between the devil and deep sea as if when we fail to get desired profit from our cotton crop due to shrinking textile sector, we opt for growing sugarcane but fall prey to sugar cartels,” said Muhammad Imran a local small farmer cultivating around eight acre land. “We toil across the year to grow sugarcane. But, when the crop is ripe we come across issues like securing slots to sell our sugarcane and wait for weeks in front of sugar mills with our sugarcane drying on our vehicles,” he said. He explained that this delay reduces weight of our sugarcane and mills benefit from it. “Then there is an issue of delayed payment. Mill owners continue to use our money for weeks to flourish their businesses before paying us the cost of our product.” Sugarcane is considered the fourth, but sometimes the third important cash crop amongst wheat, rice and maize, feeding raw material to the 2nd largest agro-based sugar industry. But, its grower is most often in turmoil due to shabby policies and exploitation at the hands of industrialists. “It is a bitter truth that despite being predominantly an agricultural country, our small farmers are often a victim of exploitation by costly inputs sellers, the middlemen as well as the industrialists,” said Rana Zulfiqar Khan, a representative of Sugarcane Growers Association Faisalabad. He said that once Pakistan was elf-reliant in sugar production but multiple factors declined sugarcane production and the country had to spend precious foreign exchange on sugar import. “There are also factors like declining water availability, rising fuel prices and power tariff as well as inputs and pesticides prices,” he noted and said, cumulative effect of all these factors also badly impacts the farmers.” Zulfiqar also mentioned to poor research in agricultural sector for developing disease-resistant varieties of sugarcane and ensuring proper pricing and in time payment to farmers for their product. He recommended to streamlining the whole process right from sugarcane growing till crop’s ripening, its selling, proper pricing and timely payments to secure farmer’s interests. Mehar Talib Hussain, a common businessman also asserts for a workable strategy to protect interests of sugarcane growers amidst challenges like increasing inputs, fuel and electricity prices. “If these trends are to stay for longer duration, the profit of sugarcane will continue to shrink that may force them to opt for other crops,” Talib said. “This tendency may result in sugar deficiency in the country and we have to spend direly needed foreign exchange on its import.” He claimed that sometime the growers had to bribe functionaries at mills to sell their sugarcane produce in-time and at the government rate. “This also lowers down their profit. Then there is dilemma of delayed crushing and delayed payments that affects growing of other crops.” Knowing the problems of farmers, the situation needs serious consideration by the concerned authorities to address the problems of farmers to ensure better crop to meet our domestic needs as well as sugar export to other countries. Deputy Director Agriculture Extension Dr Asif Ali said sugarcane was cultivated on over 1.319 million hectare land during 2022-23 and this area was 4.7 percent more than the land under sugarcane cultivation during 2021-22. “Pakistan witnessed 2.8 percent increase in sugarcane production during 2022-23 producing 91.111 million tons crop against its production of 88.651 million tons during 2021-22,” he said. Asif Ali however could not explain much about any prospect measures to curbing exploitation of farmers at the hands of sugar cartels. Meanwhile, a spokesman of Sugarcane Research Institute of Ayub Agricultural Research Faisalabad (AARI) said, their scientists were focusing to develop high cane and sugar yielding varieties that are also resistant to attacks of pests, insects, fungus and harsh weather conditions. “Our Research Institute has so far developed 28 sugarcane varieties and now our scientists are endeavoring to explore varieties that may have desired economic characters and higher sugar contents,” he informed. “The scientists were also concentrating on sugarcane zoning by launching sugarcane awareness campaign.” He has advised the growers to use certified seeds instead of traditional varieties to get better yield and enhance their profitability. Given the facts prevailing more or less the same on ground, it is direly needed to evolve strategy for protecting farmers rights to secure their profits as well as better sugar production to ensure its availability on cheaper rates.