The sugar mills owners have erected a new plant of sugar beet in Dera Ismail Khan (D.I.Khan) to encourage commercial cultivation of sugar beet, a senior official of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Livestock (Minfal), said talking to Business Recorder.
According to the official, the project costs over rupees two billion and is expected start by end April. The official said that the project is sponsored by the private sector. The commercial cultivation of sugar beet has been started in Bhakar and Darya Khan. The cultivation of sugar beet will not only provide additional sugar to fulfill the country's requirements but it will also extend the crushing season by two months.
Sugarcane is the crop cultivated on one million hectare in Punjab, Sindh and NWFP. The Punjab's share is 60 percent, Sindh 30 percent and NWFP 10 percent. The average yield of sugarcane recorded from the year 2001-05, is about 47 tons per hectare, well below the world average of 60 tons per hectare. The average production of sugarcane from the year 2001-05 is recorded as 49 million tons well below the requirement of 70 million tons to meet the existing sugar production capacity of 6.7 million tons. Similarly the current average availability of the cane to the sugar mills from the year 1997-2006, has been recorded at 35 million tons against the required capacity of 75 million tons.
The short supply of sugarcane against capacity builds up pressure on sugar mills and results in increased cost of sugar in the country. The low yield coupled with high cost of input leads to make the sugarcane crop expensive. While the crop, being a high-delta crop requires about 64-80 acre inches of water. So, in this respect, sugarcane is a dependent crop on canal irrigation as well as underground water resource. Resultantly, in the year of shortage of water, the production of sugar is even short from the country's requirement.
The sugarcane crushing starts from November and ends up in March of the following year. "Beet would be available for slicing after the cane crushing is over. It would provide additional days for the mills to continue operation additional wages for the labour and also the technical staff to work", the official stressed.
The official added that prior to that, the strenuous efforts are made by the Minfal to encourage the farmers to cultivate sugar beet. In this regard, the trials conducted by Minfal for the last four years (2002-2004) in Punjab, Sindh and NWFP have also proved successful. A fund of Rs 35 million was allocated for these trials. In Punjab experiments were conducted on Ayub Agriculture Research Institute (AARI) Faisalabad. In Sindh, these trials were conducted at Sugar Crops Research Station Tandojam and Sugar Research Institute Thatta , growers and millers farms. In NWFP, these trials were conducted at Seri Naurang and D.I.Khan.
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