‘Sugarcane under drip irrigation will not succeed’

Maharashtra State Cooperative Sugar Factories Federation (MSCSFF), the apex body of cooperative sugar mills, has questioned the state government’s decision to bring all perennial crops including sugarcane under 100 per cent drip irrigation by 2019. MSCSFF claimed that though the state of Andhra Pradesh had adopted the scheme, it was highly impossible to replicate it in Maharashtra. Furthermore, the federation suggested increasing subsidy amount and reducing its allocation from two years to zero days to somehow achieve success in the scheme.

Water resources minister Girish Mahajan on Tuesday announced that sugarcane would be brought under drip irrigation by 2019. Reacting to the announcement, MD of MSCSFF, Sanjeev Babar, said that currently, around 9.57 lakh hectares of land was under sugarcane cultivation, out of which, only 1.52 lakh hectares (not beyond 12 per cent of total land under sugar cultivation) was under drip irrigation.

Mr Babar, who has a Masters in soil management from Rahuri Agriculture University, said that drip irrigation would not succeed in Maharashtra mainly because there were two types of soil in the state. The western side of the Pune-Bengaluru National Highway covering Konkan had laterite soil while the eastern side of the highway covering western Maharashtra from Ahmednagar to Kolhapur had black cotton soil. Using excess water for crops in black cotton soil could change its fertility and possibly make it saline, which is why experts and the government were pushing for use of drip for sugarcane cultivation that was mostly concentrated in western Maharashtra. “But the claims are completely wrong and not based on thorough study,” said Mr Babar.

“According to study reports, production of one kilogram of sugar needs 2,000 litres of water whereas sugarcane yield requires 14 to 18 months. On the other hand, production of cotton needs 3,000 litres and the yield requires four months. Even rice needs 4,000 litres of water and the yield requires four months. If we calculate the use of water for equal quantity and for equal number of days, it shows that there will be four crops of rice and cotton in the same time taken for one crop of sugarcane. This means that rice and cotton need four times the quantity of water required by sugarcane; a fact ignored by experts and political leaders who are opposing sugarcane cultivation,” he said.