October 23, 2007	Tuesday	Shawwal 10, 1428

LAHORE, Oct 22: The Punjab government on Monday decided to delay the cane crushing season by ten days — now starting from Nov 10 against an earlier decision of Nov 1 — to the much annoyance of farmers, who called it “insensitive and unfortunate”.

A meeting chaired by provincial food minister Husain Jehania Gardezi and attended by representatives of the Pakistan Sugar Millers Association (PSMA), Cane Commissioner and other government officials decided the new date.

Elaborating the reasons for fixing a new date, Mr Gardezi said the country had ample sugar stocks and a bumper cane crop was expected. He insisted that the delay in crushing season would benefit the farmers in a big way.

The farmers, however, had other ideas. Sardar Zafar Husain Khan of the Kisan Board Pakistan (KBP) says one can gauge the benefits of the decision for the farmers from the fact that none of their representatives were invited to the meeting for the fear of protest. “The government officials have a habit of deciding things for farmers and then declaring they were in their (farmers’) favour,” he lamented.

The delay, he said, would also cause the farmers an irreparable loss by delaying the wheat sowing. “Every one in the government knows the most propitious time for wheat sowing. If the millers fire their boilers by November 10, they will be able to start the actual crushing by the third week of the month. That means wheat will only be sown, after two weeks of land preparation, somewhere in early December, causing the farmers an irreparable loss,” he lamented.

Ibrahim Mughal of the AgriForum says that the millers will cause a loss of Rs14 billion to the farmers by delaying cane purchase and of Rs4 billion to consumers by selling it at an inflated price. Elaborating his point of view, he said: “The country would produce 1.4 billion maunds of cane this season. Out of this total yield, 67 per cent (or 940 million maunds) would go to the millers at a cost of Rs60 billion. By delaying cane crushing by 1O days, the crop would suffer a substantial weight loss. If farmers were able to harvest it in November, cane would be a 13-month crop. But, if it is harvested in December, which in all probability, it would, the cane would become 14-month crop, increasing its cost for farmers by at least 10 per cent. The cumulative cost of both factors would be around Rs14 billion,” he said.

This loss would be in addition to delay in payments, he said and added: “Out of the total purchase of Rs60 billion, the farmers are paid more than Rs40 every season. That means that the millers use Rs20 billion of farmers’ money every season for a year. Add the interest rate of this amount and cost for farmers gets clearer,” he said.

“The farmers are now thinking about starting “gur banao” movement,” says Rana Majid Zafar of Faisalabad. “The millers get 67 per cent of the total production, and the rest already consumed for making gur. It was time to turn the gur-making trend into a movement and let the government and the millers realise the magnitude of their mistakes,” he added.