August 23, 2003	Saturday	Jumadi-us-Sani 24, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Aug 22: Officials at the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) these days are quite upbeat about sugarbeet as a substitute crop after successful experiments carried out at research institutions across various ecological zones over the past three years.

It would be a veritable revolution in the cropping pattern of Pakistan as a substantial part of the nearly 900,000 hectares now under sugarcane is released as a result of adoption by farmers of sugarbeet with a gestation period of four to five months, remarked an expert here on Wednesday.

Pakistan is not alone in swerving away from dependence on sugarcane as the source of sugar. It is already being replaced over vast areas in several countries including Egypt, Iran and India, owing to multifarious disadvantages associated with it.

That it was a problematic crop especially in Pakistan was known to most farm experts in multiple ways. For a long time, therefore, the sugarcane acreage did not increase.

It was after some politically powerful businessmen, with their mouths drooling over the profits from the simple process of crushing sugarcane, established huge sugar mills, the threat to the ecology of farming became serious. Nobody dared point out the folly of basing their industrial entrepreneurship on such a problem crop.

To ensure supplies to their mills, they raised minimum price of sugarcane to induce the farmers to expand acreage. Huge profits accrued to the industrialists through hefty subsidies from the government and withholding of payment to farmers.

It is a crop of the tropics where it rains throughout the year. By contrast, Pakistan is part of the arid zone.

Water scarcity marked by uncertainty of rains is a prime concern, so far as the cultivation of sugarcane in this country is concerned. In Sindh it needs 80 acre-inches and in Punjab 65 acre-inches of water.

With water as the most critical element involving 22-23 irrigations, the output of sugarcane has stayed put at 47 tons per hectare with a recovery rate stagnant at 8.5 per cent for the past several decades.

The gestation period of sugarcane in the Punjab is 10-12 months and in 12-16 months. And this means that the field is unavailable to the farmer for putting it to any other productive use.

Coming to sugarbeet, the expert told this correspondent, sugarbeet requires only around 27 acre-inches of water. The field thus vacated is available for cultivating two successive crops.

The experts were asked whether sugarbeet would not clash with wheat? They said these could be cultivated side by side without any mutual detriment.

And the rate of recovery is at least one per cent more than that of sugarcane. Even if we take the excess as 0.5 per cent, it means a gain of Rs4 per kg, as compared to sugarcane.

Benefits to farmers were too obvious to need hard selling on the part of Minfal.

Bringing the sugar industrialists around using sugarbeet in addition to sugarcane, on the other hand, has been a formidable task. Yet, the advantages attached to it are unmistakable. Their sugarcane crushing season, commencing in November, ends in March.

They need not close their mills then. For sugarbeet becomes available in March/April. They can thus continue their operation till the end of July.

The benefits to national economy is multi-dimensional: Increased production and turn-over plus additional three months of wages for their workers.

The only objection sugar industry could raise was that sugarbeet would cost Rs4 to Rs5 per kg of sugar. Reason: The mills burn bagasse to produce electricity, while to crush sugarbeet, they would have to use natural gas or furnace oil.

“What about the 50 to 60 per cent wet pulp that remains after extraction of sugar,” the expert countered.

At present, at least three sugar mills of the NWFP use sugarbeet. These mills would have packed up long ago had there been no sugarbeet to crush. For most of the sugarcane in that province is consumed in production of ‘Gur’.

As regards pulp, mills recover far more than Rs5 per kg from its sale to farmers as a highly nutrient cattle feed.

In fact, the mills enter into pre-sowing contracts only for sugarbeet and never for sugarcane. They even import beet seed for distribution to farmers. As regards the cost of this seed, it is only Rs600-700 per acre, as against sugarcane whose seed costs Rs5,000 per acre.