After a successful sugar year in 2010-11, Uttar Pradesh is all set to see yet another sweet year. Buoyed by the good prices that they received for their sugarcane crop last year, farmers in the state have sown more cane this year too. As per initial surveys conducted by the UP sugarcane department, the area under cane cultivation has shown a 7.2% increase than that of last year. While last year, 21.01 lakh hectares was under sugarcane cultivation, this year the area under cultivation is 22.50 lakh hectare.

Going by these figures, the department has estimated that sugar production in the state, too, will show a marked increase of almost 9% from that of last year. While previous year ended with UP producing 58.87 lakh tonne of sugar, this year, the production is expected to be 64.50 lakh tonne.

Speaking to FE, an official of the sugarcane department said that the upturn in cane cultivation is the direct fallout of the good cane prices that farmers got last year. ?Remunerative returns on cane cultivation has enthused farmers and that is the main reason behind their inclination towards planting sugarcane this year and not shifting away to other crops such as wheat and paddy,? he said.

In fact, till two years back, the cane acreage in the state was constantly shrinking, leading to lesser cane for the mills to crush. In 2007-08, the total cane area stood at 28.50 lakh hectares and in 2008-09, it came down to 21.40 lakh hectares and in 2009-10, it went further down to 17.88 lakh hectares.

It was only in 2010-11 that farmers came back to planting cane in a big way and the acreage stood increased by almost 17% to stand at 21.01 lakh hectares.

?Mills paid farmers R290-300/quintal in most parts of the state last year, thereby increasing their confidence in sowing cane again this year,? said the official adding that a jump of R40/quintal was exactly what the industry needed, because if farmers do not sow cane, sugar mills would be forced to run at lower capacities.

As a result of the dwindling cane area, sugar production also registered a marked dip for a few years.

While 2007-08 saw UP producing a whopping 73.19 lakh tonne of sugar, in 2008-09, the state?s contribution came down to 40.48 lakh tonne. In 2009-10, the trend was offset to some extent because of better yield and recovery and the season closed on 51.79 lakh tonne of sugar.

Last year the state, which is the country?s largest sugarcane producer and the second largest sugar producer, closed the season with the total sugar production of 58.79 lakh tonne after crushing 643 lakh tonne of cane.

However, experts are still wary of the initial predictions, as there is still some crucial time left for the industry to begin crushing.

?This is a crucial year for the sugar industry, which is already going through a piquant situation due to good sugar production last year, giving high cane prices to farmers and yet not being able to export the commodity. The domestic prices are weak and along with the issues of levy, the industry is facing some tough time. We are making huge losses and are desperately hoping that exports will be opened up, which will ease the situation to some extent for us,? said a miller said.