THE ART OF SUSTAINABLE SUGARCANE DEVELOPMENT: EXPERIENCES FROM IFC AGRIBUSINESS ADVISORY IN CENTRAL UTTAR PRADESH

摘要

It is well recognized that sugarcane farming is one of the major contributors to the Indian economy in terms of the large number of people dependent on it for income and livelihoods. However, sugarcane farmers, especially in states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar continue to face challenges to enhance farm incomes on account of low farm yields due to the predominance of small and marginal landholdings and subsistence agriculture, and poor agronomy package of practices. At the same time, the sugar industry is facing the problem of non availability of adequate quantity of good quality sugarcane. The Mitha Sona Pariyojana, a sugarcane farm productivity enhancement project, implemented jointly by IFC and a group of sugar mills in North India, is an attempt to use the power of the private sector to address the productivity challenge in the sugar value-chain with the overall aim of improving farm incomes. The project works through identifying constraints and strengths of the sugar mill, intensive training and capacity building of the company s extension workers and farmers on scientific agronomy package of practices formulated in the light of local conditions, and close monitoring of implementation of practices on the ground. The independent evaluation of the project s performance for a random sample of matched pairs of Project/treatment farmers and control farmers shows an average increase of 23 per cent in the yield of treatment farmers in the first year and 87 per cent in the second year from baseline productivity levels. Interestingly, in the first year the yield of control farmers declined by 11 per cent due to attack of top borer, whereas in the second year an average yield increase of 19 per cent was registered even of control famers on account of adoption of agronomy package by some of the control farmers after seeing the results of project farmers.