A Study on Sugarcane Producation and Marketing in Meerut District of Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Sugarcan~ is an imp~rta~t agro industry crop in India plays a pivotal role in ~attonal economtc by. countri?utmg1.9 per cent to gross domestic product, form an tmportan.t c~mponent m croppmg pattern of the sugarcane growers, provide an essential commodtty Ill the form of ~ugar ~nd jiggery and solves the problem of green fodder for ha.tf.of the year: The crop ts. c~lttvated in 5.03 million hectare producing more than 342 mtllton tones wtth a productiVIty of about 70 tonnes .per hectare. In India, Uttar Pradesh c~n~ibutes about. 47 per cent in area (1.98 million hectare) and production (117.14 mtllton tonnes) wtth 47.36 percent of total sugarcane production. The present study was attempt on "A Study on Sugarcane Production and Marketing in Meerut District Uttar Pradesh" with the following objectives (i) To know the socio economic profile of the sample household. (ii) To work out the cost and returns of sugarcane production for different size group of farms. (iii) To examine the resource use efficiency in sugarcane production on different size group of farms. (iv) To study the marketing pattern of sugarcane in the study area. From the purposively selected district and block on the basis of highest area under the crop. Four villages were selected randomly from the selected block, a complete list of the farmers were prepared and than categorized into four categories i.e. marginal, small, medium and large. From the total sugarcane growers, I 00 respondents were selected in probability proportion to their population, for the collection of data, suitable statistical tools were employed to meet the above objective. The socioeconomic condition of large farmers was better than to other category farmers because of resource rich condition. The cost of cultivation of sugarcane planted was Rs 172679, in which share of operational cost, land rent and material costs was 38, 22 and 26 percent respectively. The cost of cultivation of sugarcane ratoon was to be Rs 129752.65 with share of operational cost, land rent and material cost of 41, 29 and 14 percent respectively. In case of sugarcane planted, marginal value productivity, acquisition costs and their difference indicates that in the marginal category seed and manure and fertilizer was optimally utilized by the respondents and other were under sub optimal.use. In case ~f 'small category plant protection and machinery labour were only under opttmal use, and m the medium and large category only irrigation was found sub optimal use and rest of them were at optimum level. In case of sugarcane ratoon, marginal value productivity, acquisition costs and their difference indicates that in the marginal category_ only irrigation was sub optimally utilized by the respondents and other were under optnnally use. In the small and large category only human labour was found optimally use rest of them were at sub optimum use and in case of medium category all ~esourc.es were found at optimum level use. In the study area sugar cane supply to sugar mtlls vanes from 84.26 to 98.59 per cent and 1.41 to 5.74 percent were for crashers and rest amount were utilized for home consumption.