KARACHI, Oct 20: Minister for Food, Agriculture and Live Stock (Minfal) Khair Muhammad Junejo on Saturday said that two-pronged strategy has been evolved to enhance local sugar production to save precious foreign exchange.

Addressing a one day seminar on ‘sugar beet cultivation — pros and cons’ organized by Pakistan Society of Sugar Technologists, the minister said because of severe drought situation the country, during last two years, had spent Rs14 billion on import of sugar.

In order to overcome the steep fall in sugarcane production, because of shortage of irrigation water, the minister said that sugar beet cultivation in the Punjab and Sindh would be carried out to supplement sugarcane as a second source of raw material.

Consequently, Junejo said, Minfal has evolved a two-pronged strategy under which more high yielding new sugarcane varieties would be introduced to improve per acre yield with better recovery rate, and an additional crop of sugarbeet to supplement sugarcane would be encouraged to extend the existing crushing period of the sugar industry.

The minister said that Minfal over the last year had successfully conducted beet cultivation experiments on more than 15 locations in Sindh. The results, he said, were encouraging with regard to recovery, yield and water requirement.

Junejo said, in Sindh, sugarcane crop required about 70-80 acre inch of water, and in Punjab about 44-acre inch water was required. But beet, he said, required around 27-acre inch and was a 4-5 month crop. Also beet can be inter-cropped in the month of September.

Plantation of sugarbeet thus requires no additional land, and would be an additional crop to increase per acre profitability of the farmers as well as extend the crushing period of the sugar industry to produce more per hectare sugar, he said.

Khair Muhammad Junejo stressed that the experiments conducted by Minfal would not only help in handling the crop (sugarbeet) during post-harvest operation, agronomic practices, its suitability but in the long-run it could prove a prime source of sugar especially under the circumstances where water was scarce.

He said that Minfal along with the provincial government intended to continue these experiments for another three years to firm up its recommendations for better output on farmer field as well as to fit beet in the cropping pattern of the Punjab and Sindh.

The minister admitted that there existed marketing problem for the sugarbeet as last year Minfal could not provide market to beet growers in Sindh and Punjab. “Beet is a new crop for the Punjab and Sindh and Minfal feels that if market was not provided, then the growers will be discouraged and beet cultivation will be over once for all because of this single factor of marketing.”

He urged upon the sugar industry to extend their full support in resolving this problem so that beet cultivation could be encouraged and become second source of raw material for the industry.

Though the country in 1997-98 and 1998-99 produced sufficient sugar to meet not only the domestic requirements but also exported sugar worth about Rs14 billion. But in the last two years, he said, due to severe drought situation in the country, sugarcane production dropped from 55.7 million tons in 1998-99 to 46.3 million tons in 1999-2000 and further to 43.6 million tons in 2000-01.

Earlier in address of welcome the president, Pakistan Society of Sugar Technologists, Mohammad Shaffat Zaidi requested the minister to make necessary amendments in the Cane Act to discourage the menace of middleman which can only be done by taking stricter measures.

He also drew the attention of the participants towards the fast approaching deadline of WTO rules, when no tariff protection for higher cost of production would be available to save the local industry.

Consequently, he said the high cost of inputs by way of the highest cane price for such low sucrose contents, high cost of electricity and comparatively high cost of labour are threatening industry’s viability.