A study by NFCSF that compared the Indian sugar industry with Brazil said that sugar production cost in the Latin American country was about 55per cent of the world average as compared with 94per cent in India. The average cane prices in Brazil was 50per cent of the cane prices in India.
"Very little efforts have been made to develop cane with high sugar content," the study said pointing out that viable alternative would be to encourage farmers to grow sugar beet and sweet sorghum, which has better yield and high sugar recovery.
The apex sugar industry body has also recommended that farmers should use drip irrigation systems to minimise the cost of cane cultivation. Farmers should also resort to ring plantation, tissue culture, application of bio-fertilisers and pest control, inter-cropping
and timely substitution of seed to ensure healthy crops for high yield of sugar per hectare.
Saying that it was not possible to reduce the cane prices due to socio-political reasons, the study suggested cultivation of alternate crops with high sugar content and technological upgrade of mills for reducing the high conversion cost.
It suggested that mills go for co-products like ethanol production from molasses and from sugarcane juice (in times of surplus cane production), power cogeneration from bagasse, selling of bagasse to paper industries.
It also recommended adaptation of latest technology to process high-quality refined sugar for selling at a premium price in the global market.
