Sugarcane industry in water-stressed Maharashtra

Akash Gulankar | Maharashtra, the sugarcane powerhouse of the country, contributes to over a quarter of India's total production. The top sugarcane producing districts of Maharashtra - Ahmednagar and Solapur - also top the list of most water stressed districts in the state. Here are some interesting data-driven facts about Maharashtra’s relationship with sugarcane.

1. Maharashtra is one of the largest producers of sugarcane in India

Maharashtra is the second-largest producer of sugarcane in India, after Uttar Pradesh. The state produced 136 million tonnes of sugarcane in 2022-23. This accounted for over one fourth of the total production in the country, according to the official data of the Union Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare of India.

The state has consistently been among the top growers of sugarcane in the country over the last decade. It has consistently maintained the share of over 20 percent production each year, in the last eight out of 10 years, says the data. In the 2022-23 growing season, four districts - Solapur, Kolhapur, Ahmednagar and Pune - contributed to over half of the state’s sugarcane production and accounted for almost half of the total sugarcane cultivated land or what is called the area under sugarcane cultivation.

Maharashtra has seen a steady spike in area under sugarcane cultivation over the last decade, where it has increased by almost one and a half times than that of 2013-14, shows the data of the Union Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare of India. In 2022-23, the state had 14.87 lakh hectares of land under sugarcane cultivation. This size would be ten times larger than the area of the country of Mauritius. Meanwhile, the four sugarcane dominating districts of Solapur, Kolhapur, Ahmednagar and Pune account for an area of 7 lakh hectares, which, as stated earlier, is nearly half of the total sugarcane cultivation area of the state.

2. Five districts produce over half the sugarcane of the state

A total of 31 out of 36 districts in Maharashtra are sugarcane producers. Out of these, only five districts  - Solapur, Pune, Ahmednagar, Satara and Kolhapur - produce over half of the sugarcane in the state.

Ahmednagar has dominated production since the 1970s. In the last 10 years, Ahmednagar and Pune have added over 30 thousand hectares each to their respective areas under cultivation. This is in addition to over 1 lakh hectares of area under cultivation. As per the latest figures, the two districts - Ahmednagar and Pune - have 1.60 lakh hectares and 1.57 lakh hectares of area under sugarcane cultivation.

3. No major change in groundwater extraction

According to official data of Central Ground Water Board of India (CGWB),  four out of nine  water-stressed districts in 2022-23 - Ahmednagar, Solapur, Satara and Pune - were major sugarcane producers each accounting for around 10 percent of Maharashtra's production or more. These water stressed districts are ironically the ones that produce almost half of sugarcane produce in the state.

The top three districts - Ahmednagar, Pune and Solapur - have seen a major spike in sugarcane cultivation since 2014-15 while witnessing a slight decline in groundwater extraction at the same period. There is no major change in the availability of annual extractable groundwater in all four high sugar-producing and water-stressed districts since 2017, shows the CGWB report.

The top two sugarcane producers - Ahmednagar and Solapur - used over 70 percent of their extracted groundwater for irrigation in 2023. Pune, on other hand, used 66 percent of its groundwater for irrigation during the same period of time. Since 2017, both districts have dramatically ramped up their sugarcane production without increasing the amount of groundwater they extract each year. How is this possible? The answer, perhaps, lies in the use of canal systems.

Anil Morghe, a sugarcane farmer from Shevgaon Taluka in Ahmednagar district said, “Pipelines (laid to lift water from water canals to farms) - are major sources of water for farming in our region. We rely on canal water for our sugarcane crop.” He further added, “Sometimes, when a canal doesn’t have water, we extract from wells. But right after a few weeks, the water supplied in the farms from pipelines also percolates and in turn maintains the water level of wells too.”

4. Area under cultivation has increased, but yield has declined

A total of 10 districts have seen doubling of production of sugarcane in the last 10 years in Maharashtra. Smaller producers like Beed quadrupled its production. Meanwhile, the top five districts saw a modest growth of just about 20 percent on the total production of sugarcane over a decade.

However, the yield of sugarcane has declined during the same period. Yield is the tonnes of produce per hectare for any crop. Four out of the top five sugarcane producing districts have experienced falling yields between 2014-15 and 2022-23, with Ahmednagar being the only exception, having experienced a yield increase of three tonnes in every 20 tonnes per hectare.

Solapur (10.64 percent) and Pune (1.15 percent) reported a decline over the same period. Ahmednagar produced over an average of 110 tonnes of sugarcane per acre in 2022-23 while other two districts produced an average of 107 and 87 tonnes/acre, respectively.

Researcher and assistant professor at Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Dr. Dilip Karjale, while speaking about the recent spike in sugarcane production in the state, said that this can be attributed to the increased irrigation infrastructure and its augmentation through credit access or subsidies. “They also got institutional credit access, or simply put, loans to buy pumps or other irrigation materials. So farmers used that money to irrigate the land upstream of the canal. Hence the spike,” he added.

5. Farmers prefer sugarcane over other crops

Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) and assured returns is one of the major factors for the choice of sugarcane over other crops. FRP is the minimum price that sugarcane mills are required to pay to farmers upon buying their produce. It is announced by the central government of India each year, and is designed to protect the farmers from the losses.

Equivalent to FRP, other crops have a provision of Minimum Support Price (MSP) which is decided by the central government. This provision has been made to safeguard interests of farmers and reduce their losses during bumper production year or market volatility. Sugarcane gets the lowest FRP at Rs 305/quintal compared to Soybean, Rice, Jowar, and Cotton fetching the MSP to the tune of thousands of rupees per quintal. However, other crops do not give assured returns like sugarcane does. Farmers say that sugarcane is the most sturdy crop and has practically no external factors that can affect its production.

“Sugarcane will survive in floods or even if you don’t give water for two weeks. It just stays there. Also, it is not affected by any crop diseases unlike Jowar, Cotton, Onion or other small cycle crops,” says Sambhaji Kajale who owns farmland in Nevasa district of Ahmednagar. He has been a sugarcane producer for over two decades now.

Adinath Garje, another farmer from Nevasa explains, “Even though seasonal crops like cotton, soybean have MSPs, the reality is slightly different. These crops are also affected majorly by natural disasters like unlikely rains. And if it rains right before the harvest, almost 100 percent of your crop is lost.”  resulting in  financial losses. However, even though the FRP from sugarcane is low, it is a preferred crop because of its hardy nature.

Dr Dilip Kajale emphasised on two major factors for choosing sugarcane over other crops: performance of the crop and available market infrastructure. He said, “If they (farmers) start getting double income in some other crop, why would they choose only one?” He also stressed on the reality of the price realisation of the crop. He pointed out that for most of the crops, the government declared price is one benchmark, but what a farmer actually gets is a bit less. “However, with sugarcane, this is not the case,’ he shared. The farmer gets exactly what has been promised or more at times.

Reporting for this story was supported by the Environmental Data Journalism Academy - a programme of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and Thibi.