| A new sugarcane policy will put sugar mills under some mandatory provisions like buy-back agreement, publication of supply schedule, zero incentives to new sugar mills and abrogation of state advisory prices to mills. |
| The new policy will also pronounce auction of closed sugar mills of the state cooperative sector. |
| "Sugar mills will be allocated a reserved area in a radius of 15 km. A mill will be allowed to operate only when it will have crushing capacity of 2,500 TCD (tonnes crushed/day). The millers will have to enter into buy-back arrangements with farmers for additional sugarcane production. The new law will empower the state government to ask millers to run mills to their full capacity. In case if a sugar mill runs under capacity, it will have to compensate farmers for the crop losses," a well-placed government source told Business Standard. |
| State Agriculture Minister Chandrabhan Singh, Cooperative Minister Gopal Bhargava and Health Minister Ajay Vishnoi recently discussed the finer points of the sugarcane policy to be launched. |
| "No new vacuum pan sugar mill be allowed to take shape in a radius of 15 km of an already running sugar mill. However state government will promote gur and khandsari makers. Small scale units that will crush sugarcane for gur manufacturing through traditional methods will be given priority," the source added. |
| Millers will now have to publicise their daily demand-supply schedule to bring transparency in actual crushing and processing. |
| Sugarcane acreage has gone up from 55,000 hectares of the previous year to 76,000 hectares this year. |
| Also, the state grew 250,000 tonnes of surplus sugarcane. The sugarcane farmers of the state feed 11 sugar mills with installed capacity of 22,000 tones a day. |
| Cane growers had faced tough time this year in the state and some of them had set their cane farms ablaze in Narsinghpur and Hoshangabad districts. |
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