Year after year, despite drought conditions in many parts of the country, we produce more and more of sugarcane – a water-guzzling crop, and there is a huge amount of excess sugar in supply in the market today.
In fact, we are entering the Sugar season 2019-20 (October- September) with a record opening stock of 142 lakh tonnes of sugar — that can actually serve half the country’s annual demand.
While scrapping FRP to dissuade farmers from growing cane is not in consideration by states, given the vote bank of cane growers, all focus is now in pushing mills to divert cane into making of ethanol — a biofuel that derived from sugarcane that when blended with petrol, limits carbon discharge.