Why Maharashtra sugar mills are turning to machines for harvesting cane

Labour shortages, successful turn, person spurred workplace mechanisation and adjacent income of herbicides to regenerate manual weeding.

A important communicative of mechanisation, unfolding successful Maharashtra, is successful sugarcane harvesting.

The existent system

In Maharashtra, dissimilar successful Uttar Pradesh and astir different cane-growing states, it is the sweetener mills and not farmers who undertake harvesting.

The factories participate into contracts with muqaddams (middlemen) to organise tolis (labour gangs) for harvesting cane successful farmers’ fields. The muqaddam successful complaint of a toli — each comprising 10 man-woman pairs of labourers — is typically paid an beforehand astir June to bring them during the cane crushing play from November till April.

A azygous labourer-couple tin harvest 2-2.5 tonnes of cane per day, amounting to 20-25 tonnes for a toli. A mill crushing 5 lakh tonnes (lt) of cane implicit a 150-day play would, thus, necessitate astir 150 tolis oregon 3,000 labourers.

Maharashtra has an estimated 12-12.5 lakh cane-harvesting labourers. Around 8-8.5 lakh enactment successful the authorities — the mills are mostly successful occidental Maharashtra and the adjoining Marathwada districts of Dharashiv and Latur — portion the remainder spell to Karnataka and Gujarat. The bulk of them are migrants coming from Beed, Ahmednagar, Hingoli, Nanded and Yavatmal (mostly belonging to the Banjara/Lambani and Vanjari Other Backward Class communities), and besides Amravati and Nandurbar (mainly adivasi tribals).

The muqaddam is liable for recruiting the labourers, too supervising them and coordinating with the mill staff. The cane successful each tract — 5 lt would screen implicit 7,000 hectares, astatine an mean 70 tonnes/hectare output — is harvested arsenic per a pre-planned schedule, to warrant uninterrupted proviso during the crushing season.

The harvesting labourers are paid Rs 366/tonne now. This is simply a complaint fixed by the Maharashtra authorities arsenic a tripartite statement with the labourers’ state-level unions and the millers’ association. The muqaddam receives a committee connected top, usually 20%, from the factories. Being paid astatine the extremity of the season, it incentivises him to guarantee that the labour not lone comes, but works and does not permission midway.

A muqaddam (contractor) taking labourers from Maharashtra’s Beed territory to a mill successful bluish Karnataka. (Photo: Harish Damodaran)

The full system, however, hangs by a slender thread. There are instances wherever mills wage the beforehand to the muqaddam, who distributes it to the labourers and they yet don’t crook up. Sometimes, labour isn’t disposable and crushing cannot commencement due to the fact that of elections — arsenic has happened this season. Moreover, the harvesting labour unit is itself aging, with the adjacent procreation having basal acquisition and not keen to bash the enactment of their parents.

Mechanical harvesters

In 2020-21, the Manjara Farmers’ Cooperative Sugar Factory astatine Latur deployed 10 cane harvesting machines connected an experimental basis. That fig roseate to 13 successful 2021-22 and to 44 successful the 2022-23 crushing season, which saw 75% of the mill’s cane being mechanically harvested.

During 2023-24, astir 93% of the full 6.61 lt cane crushed from 9,000-odd hectares was harvested by 49 machines. “This season, we volition beryllium India’s archetypal sweetener mill to execute 100% mechanical harvesting,” said P S Desai, managing manager of the Manjara factory, which present has 55 harvesters manufactured by CNH Industrial (New Holland brand) and Tirth Agro Technology (Shaktiman).

Out of the 55, lone 7 are mill-owned. The remainder are with backstage entrepreneurs, who person been provided loans by the Latur District Central Cooperative Bank (LDCCB) against the warrant of the mill lifting the machine-harvested cane (the Manjara cooperative was founded by the erstwhile Maharashtra Chief Minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh; his Dhiraj, is the LDCCB’s chairman).

The mechanical harvester owners are being fixed Rs 475/tonne, much than the Rs 439 for manual harvesters aft adding the 20% muqaddam commission. “But we don’t person to interest astir labourers not coming oregon moving away. Earlier, we had 80-100 mill unit conscionable to woody with the muqaddams and tolis. Today, 24-25 are needed to oversee 55 machines,” Desai said.

The machines chopped the full cane from the bottom. The knives of the manual harvesters usually don’t spell that debased and permission down 4-6 inches of cane connected the ground. Since the little portion of the cane has much sugar, it besides translates to little betterment during crushing.

Moreover, March onwards, the ratio of harvesting and cane arrivals, too, is reduced arsenic the somesthesia starts to rise, adding to further accent connected the labourers. They, then, complaint other from the farmers to harvest their cane.

The Manjara cooperative paid its farmer-members a cane terms of Rs 2,700 per tonne successful 2023-24, which excluded harvesting and transport charges of Rs 809.96. The Manjara Group – present nether the precocious Vilasrao Deshmukh’s brother, Diliprao — has 10 mills successful each (five of them private) that unneurotic crushed 53.02 lt of cane successful the past season.

“He (Diliprao) has acceptable a people of 50% mechanical harvesting for the different 9 mills successful the caller 2024-25 season,” Desai said.

Pros and cons

Sachin Shinde has invested Rs 90 lakh successful a 173-horsepower ‘Shaktiman’ sugarcane harvester, positive Rs 10 lakh each successful 2 infielders. These, attached to 55-hp tractors (two of them, costing different Rs 10 lakh each), determination parallel to the harvester and cod the chopped cane successful a hydraulically-operated cage.

The 39-year-old — who besides grows sugarcane connected 15 retired of his 45-acres onshore successful Sawargaon colony of Latur territory — has wide spent Rs 1.3 crore, 90% of it financed by a LDCCB indebtedness astatine 10% yearly interest. In 2022-23, helium harvested 12,500 tonnes. Last season, helium harvested 19,500 tonnes, and grossed Rs 92.62 lakh astatine Rs 475/tonne.

Shinde has hired 2 harvester operators (at Rs 50,000/month each) and 4 infielder drivers (Rs 20,000/month each). His outgo connected labour, replacement of cutting blades and instrumentality attraction is Rs 15 lakh. The outgo of diesel (average 2.25 litres per tonne of cane), astatine Rs 92/litre, is Rs 40.4 lakh connected 19,500 tonnes. That inactive leaves a decent gross margin.

A large drawback of the mechanical harvesters is that they chopped not conscionable the full cane, but besides the greenish apical leaves fed to animals. In states specified arsenic UP, the fodder needs of buffaloes and cattle during the wintertime and outpouring months are fundamentally met by cane tops. The harvesters merchandise the tops into the tract done an extractor instrumentality aft chopping them into precise tiny pieces, which cannot beryllium easy collected for fodder purposes.

But Shinde claimed that the cane tops near successful the tract assistance heighten ungraded integrated matter. They besides enactment arsenic mulch (cover) for the soil, protecting it against h2o nonaccomplishment and excess vigor oregon cold.

B B Thombare, president of Natural Sugar & Allied Industries Ltd, felt that mechanical cane harvesting is inevitable, “but volition beryllium a gradual process”. His mill astatine Ranjani successful Dharashiv district’s Kalamb taluka, which crushed 9.45 lt of cane past season, has 25 harvesting machines. These harvested 20% of its cane, “which whitethorn spell up to 50% successful 5 years’ time”.