Sugarcane Cultivation through Organic-SSI Approach

Profile of Nayagarh district:

Nayagarh, one of the eastern districts of Orissa is situated in the hilly ranges in the West and its North Eastern parts have formed a small well cultivated fertile valleys intersected by small streams. River Mahanadi flows in the Eastern boundary. Rural population constitutes 95.71% of total population. Near about 62.6% population lives below poverty line in the district which includes 68% rural population.

Agriculture being the main source of economy and subsistence for the rural people plays a critical role in the economy of the district and the livelihood of majority of its population. Sugarcane is grown in the district second to rice. According to Agricultural census 2000-01, nearly 90% belongs to marginal and small farmers having 62% land while remaining 10% medium and large farmers have 38% land as operational holding. Total workforce in the district is about 2.89 lakh, of which 29.8% are cultivators and 32.75% are agricultural labourers.^[1] The district has 33% landless households directly depend on agriculture. The high concentration of landless, marginal and small holders, itself suggests how vulnerable the district is in terms of capital investment and sustained economy.

Sugarcane in the District:

Table-1: Status of Sugarcane in Nayagarh
Year	Area in 000'ha	Yield in qntl/ha	Production in MT
1995-96	5.87	81700	479.60
1996-97	4.57	80000	365.60
1997-98	5.21	80000	416.80
1998-99	5.22	75530	394.27
1999-00	3.00	75730	227.19
2000-01	5.22	76070	397.09
2001-02	1.99	76000	151.24
2003-04	3.01	68590	206.46
2004-05	4.44	62124	276.26
2005-06	5.16	64230	331.43
2006-07	5.51	64235	353.93
2007-08	4.55	63895	290.72

Sugarcane, as a cash crop is grown in Nayagarh. Some of the farmers also grow sugarcane under leased terms. The yield level of the crop is also appreciable and in earlier occasions the farmers of the district have been awarded with National Prize for the best yield in the region. It is now seen that the area and production of cane has been on a decline scale (Table-1).

Lack of quality planting materials, high cost of inputs and distress procurement are some of the major constraints reported leading to poor performance of the crop.

A farmer who, other than the ratoon, promotes sugarcane spends a huge amount for seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and intensive labour as well as water, leading to inadvertent detrimental effects on the soil fertility, biomass, overall pressures on water sources and ecosystems. Besides, as sugarcane is a long duration crop (more than 9 months for a crop cycle), it faces one or the other vagaries of nature that adversely affect cane and sucrose productivity. In the district, a farmer spends anywhere from Rs. 33,000/- to 38,000/- per acre to get 28 to 35 tons per acre. Being a marginal, small and landless farmer, they neither get any loan from the banks nor count under any subsidy, incentive or compensation from the Government. Thus with huge investment on the crop and with minimum variation in the yield directly put those in economic vulnerable conditions lead them either into a never-ending debt trap or lease out/sell the piece of land.

Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative (SSI) based on the principles of System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has been introduced in the region among the farmers as a solution to the above. Like SRI, bud (seed) treatment (with lime and cow urine), seedling bed preparation on cavity-trays, single bud transplantation, transplantation of seedlings (25-35 days), wider spacing (2 ft X 4 ft) and organic manure application improves the productivity of land, water, more healthy canes with less seeds and more economical benefits to the farmers, apart from its environmental benefits. The mulching of dried sugarcane leaves in the inter-row spaces of sugarcane settings conserves surface moisture and controls weeds and therefore checks the water loss due to them.

However, NIRMAN’s being with the sugarcane growers of the district for the last two years helped to further clarify our understanding on a few dimensions of cost of cultivation (Table-2), processing and marketing strategies confronting their food security.

Table-2: Conventional Vs SSI
Particulars	Conventional	SSI
Seed (per acre)	76,800 nodes	5,600-6,500 buds
	Rs 14400/-	Rs 1300/-
Water	24 hrs/day for 4 days: 8 times in a crop cycle	8 hrs/day for 3 days: 4 times in a crop cycle
Labour (including irrigation)	1190 person-days OR 1776 hrs in a crop cycle	136 person-days OR 648 hrs in a crop cycle
Per Acre Cost	Rs 21,244/-	Rs 7200/-
Intercropping	Nil	Possible
		(Bonus for Farmer)

The above mentioned production cost is found to be beneficial to the debt bound farmers. It is estimated that by adopting the SSI methods, a farmer will be able to produce at least 60% more sugarcane while reducing water inputs by 3 times. It is based on the principle of getting “more with less” as only 5000 seedlings are required, which cumulatively weigh only 25-30 kg instead of the 5-6 tons of sugarcane required under the conventional method and the farmer can use the cane for crushing for jaggery after the buds are removed with a bud chipper in the former case. In the conventional method, the farmer spends up to Rs. 16,000/- for the seed, which is a saving for him in case he adopts SSI. So with low investment, a farmer can get more yields. Again, as there is irregular/deficient rainfall in the Nayagarh district and as sugarcane is the thirstiest crop- after paddy, SSI is a viable solution to address the problems mentioned above.

Learning & Constraints:

Spacing in cultivation: Initially, all farmers refused to adopt the 5 feet spacing. They are having a piece of land and didn’t want to waste their space. Our gradual discussion made then agreed to 4 feet spacing and later few farmers experimented with different spacing e.g. e.g. 6 feet (in case of demonstration with drip irrigation), 4 feet, 3 feet and 2 feet as well (Table-3).

Keeping all other factors such as variety of sugarcane, land type, soil type, water input, nutrient input, weeding and earthing up etc. constant, they arrived to the following findings:

Table-3: Experiment with different spacing
Spacing	No. of tillers	Length of internodes	Height	Girth (in cm)			Weight
				B	M	T
6 ft	6	15 cm	315 cm	8	7.5	7	1.7 kg
4 ft	8	10 cm	373 cm	7.5	7.1	6.3	2.1 kg
3 ft	8	7.5 cm	357 cm	7.2	6	5.2	1.9 kg
2 ft	6	5.5 cm	330 cm	6.7	6	4.9	1.7 kg
B-bottom; M-middle; T-top

It was found from farmers that selling self produced jaggery benefits more than three times than supplying to the sugar factory. This further approached the farmers to run their own processing unit for jaggery than sell out to the factory.

Besides, the total baggage from an acre produce is estimated to replace the one year firewood requirement of a five member family. The family’s dependence on fire wood completely saved, may be estimated to Rs 18,000/-. This has further strengthened the house hold economy.

Few farmers later shaped themselves to start selling the bud. They have taken this strategic activity as their way of income generation. The sugarcane baggage can be well powdered and mixture with other nutrient supplements to be used as cattle feed. This aspect can be adopted for further economic development.

Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative, the practice requires 50% less water, but in the absence of an assured source of irrigation (Farmers’ who were unable to provide irrigation) during April- May in the SSI field have faced up to 40 percent crop damage.

Sugarcane in Orissa Context:

Orissa, the 8^th largest State with respect to area and 11^th largest in terms of population occupies 4.74% of India’s landmass and accounts for 3.58% (2001, Census of India) of the country’s population.

Agriculture is the mainstay of Orissa’s economy providing livelihood support to more than 80% of population. The agriculture sector contributes nearly 30% of the State’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employs over 70% of the workforce. Out of the total population, 87% live in rural area depending heavily (nearly 73%) on agriculture for employment and sustenance. Marginal and small holders account for 83.8%.

The State comprises 4.74% of India’s landmass with total cultivable land of 61.80 lakh hectares of which only 25.20 lakh hectares under cultivation and 41.41 lakh hectares (around 67%) is in rainfed areas. The State has all its districts coming under the rainfed regions. The distribution of rainfall is very uneven in terms of time and space. About 60% of the area receives an annual rainfall of no more than the normal of 1451.2 mm. The production potential of these areas is obviously quite limited. Rainfed areas also suffer from droughts almost in every year in the era of ‘changing climate’.

Sugarcane, as a cash crop is cultivated in all the 30 districts of State, however more than 50% of the crop only covered in the un-divided districts of Puri (Nayagarh includes), Cuttack, Ganjam, Koraput, Dhenkanal, Bolangir, Kalahandi and Sambalpur. The total area coverage under sugarcane estimates to 48,000 hectare contributes 1.17% to the Nation. The productivity of the state is 70.03 MTs/ hectare as against the national productivity of 84 MTs/ hectare.

The State has a target to cover at least 1.5 Lakh hectare of area under sugarcane during the 11^th Plan Period (2007-2012). Thought the area under the cane cultivation is hovering around 33.85 thousand hectare, has increased from 25 thousand hectare during 2002-03 to 38.08 thousand hectare in 2007-08. Production of sugarcane has increased from 1516 000’MT in 2003-04 to 3840 000’MT in 2008-09. The production trend shows an increase of 43.34% in 2008-09 over 2007-08. Similarly, the productivity has increased by 13.71% in the same time period. There are seven sugar mills in the state, out of which 6 mills are in operation. The state produces only 10% of the sugar it consumes[2].

Farmers in Orissa are more dependent on the monsoon, thus more vulnerable to minimum weathered variation. The occurrence of drought has become a phenomenon in the State. During the 1950s, only three districts were drought-prone. By the 1980s, the whole of western Orissa, consisting of five districts, became drought-prone. During the 1990s, 15 of the 30 districts became drought-prone. The ‘usual rainy days’ is decreasing; there was poor rain during Kharif-2010, 17 districts out of 30 were declared as drought prone with an average crop loss up-to 70%[3] and rain fall in the midst of winter i.e. December also ruined the remain harvest[4]. The per capita debt is raised to Rs 9316 in the state^[5]. A trend of debt bound marginal, small and landless farmers’ suicide cases due to crop loss has gradually emerged in the State; more than 39 farmers ended lives in Kharif-2010 alone including two women farmers and another 28 during the post harvest period and more numbers are yet to count.

All these have been contributing to a destabilization of the system of cultivation resulting in food crisis and in turn enhance hunger-poverty-migration and social-economical-environment imbalance.

However, no death toll has been reported or seen among the sugarcane growers. Generally, a farmer grows sugarcane only a portion of a land along with staple food crop i.e. rice. Though sugarcane decides the economic life of a farmer, but it has been proved as an insurance crop to the farmer in the midst of climatic variations, especially visible in Nayagarh district where NIRMAN works with the sugarcane growers. All these regions, almost all the 56 farmers have lost up to 75% rice crop, but survived with bumper yield of sugarcane through Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative (SSI).

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[1] Agricultural census 2000-01

[2] Nayagarh District Annual Plan 2010-11, District Planning Officer, Nayagarh.

[3] As answered by Agriculture Minister on 10^th December in Assembly session.

[4] The state has received 5 to 93.6 mm rain during 6^th-10^th December 2010 leading to huge crop loss, as answered by Agriculture Minister on 10^th December in Assembly session.

[5] As answered by Finance Minister on 6^th December 2010 in Assembly questionnaire session.