A shortage of labor and rising costs have led to an increase in standover cane during the 2022 and 2023 seasons. In 2022, there were 26,040 tonnes of standover cane, with 82 percent attributed to labor shortages or unmanageable labor costs for farmers.
According to Bhan Pratap Singh, the chief executive officer of FSC, the total standover cane rose to 28,575 tonnes in the 2023 season, marking a 10 percent increase from the previous year. Singh noted that 93 percent of the unharvested cane was due to labor-related challenges, with 87 percent of this cane coming from hilly and uneven terrain where mechanical harvesters cannot operate.
Singh highlighted that manual harvesting still represents approximately 50 percent of the total cane harvest, although the number of cane cutters has decreased to between 5,000 and 6,000. He stated that farmers are struggling to find laborers for harvesting tasks.
The FSC is collaborating with the Ministry of Sugar Industry to introduce specialized harvesters for hilly areas from now until 2025. Singh reported that manual harvesting accounted for 42.2 percent of the total cane harvested this season, showing a 5 percent increase compared to 2022.
In 2016, only 8.9 percent of cane was mechanically harvested, but significant advancements have been made in the past seven years regarding the number of harvesters and volume harvested. The fleet has grown by 92 units, and the proportion of cane harvested mechanically has risen to 42.4 percent, indicating a pressing need for the mechanization of sugar cane farming.
The 2023 cane crop yielded 1.57 million tonnes from an area of 32,285 hectares, supplied by 10,565 growers, with an average productivity of 47 tonnes per hectare.