Cane crushing begins at Alanganallur sugar mill

Cane crushing at the National Cooperative Sugar Mills (NCSM) in Alanganallur here for 2017-18 season was inaugurated by Collector K. Veera Raghava Rao on Saturday.

Owing to the drought witnessed across Tamil Nadu, including Madurai, last year, the officials at the mill said that they were targeting to crush only 50,000 tonnes of sugarcane this season, which is less than one-third of the 1.74 lakh tonnes crushed during the previous year.

The average recovery rate during the previous sugarcane season was 9.01 % and a total of 1,57,140 quintals of sugar was manufactured, they said, adding that a target recovery rate of 9.5 % had been fixed for the present season.

Stating that it was tough to operate the mill with the low quantity of sugarcane available for crushing, the officials said that best efforts had been made to run the mill this season, keeping the welfare of farmers in mind. A senior official said that the mill was even trying to get sugarcane from farmers who had not pledged their produce to the mill.

It has to be noted that a section of farmers from Alanganallur region petitioned the Collector recently, alleging coercive measures by NCSM officials to sell their produce to the mill even if they had not registered with the mill.

Mr. Rao said that cane cutting instructions had already been sent to areas falling under the mill’s jurisdiction and appealed to the farmers to ensure steady supply of cane so that the efficiency of the crushing operations at the mill could be maintained at a higher level, which would, in turn, lead to higher earnings for the farmers.

He said that the farmers would be paid the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) of ₹ 2,550 per tonne of sugarcane fixed by the Union government. He also highlighted that NCSM would be bearing the labour and other cost involved in cutting sugarcane and transporting it to the mill.

Sugarcane News



via The Hindu http://www.thehindu.com

http://ift.tt/2nLaUiq

December 9, 2017 at 04:56PM