Sugar Industry

India is the second biggest player in the global sugar market after Brazil. In India,
both cooperative and private sugar factories are working. In our region, planting of
sugarcane starts in September. Various varieties of sugarcane available in the
market. Some varieties are ready to harvest in 12 months, some lasts strong for
three years. Farmer choose variety according to their need and availability of water.
Planting
For planting, Farmers need premature sugarcane with good bud and high fertility.
Most of the time farmer doesn’t have premature sugarcane at their farm. To solve
this problem, sugar factory helps farmer by providing premature sugarcane.
How factory provides premature sugarcane to farmer?
Sugar factories have set their sub- offices in every division of working area. These
sub-offices are commonly called as Gut office. Those farmers who have premature
sugarcane at their farm, inform details about it to gut office. Gut office official visit
their farm and if they found all okay, they provide that sugarcane to farmers, who
want sugarcane for planting. This transaction is done by sugar factory. If farmer
doesn’t have money to pay, sugar factory pays this bill. Sugar factory directly
deduct this bill from farmers sugarcane payout of next year; they also charge
interest on this amount.
Registration
After planting, farmers have to visit gut office with their 7/12 form of land. Once
gut office received 7/12, office boy visits that farm and verify details. After
verification, they fill the form of registration. These forms and 7/12 of land then
forwarded to sugar factory’s main office. Sugar factories date-wise keeping these
records for future harvesting planning.

Fertilizers-
Based on above registrations, Sugar factory provide fertilizers to farmers on loan
basis and they charge interest on this amount. This amount is also deducted from
farmers payout.
Crushing season planning-
Sugar factory starts dealing with labour and labour contractors before two to three
months before crushing season. Normally, crushing season starts in November.
Before the crushing season, factories arrange labour force and vehicles. Then, they
move on to registrations of sugarcane received and plan the harvesting schedule
accordingly.
Harvesting schedule is created for every 15 days. Schedule is not created for whole
season. Because, there are irregularities in labour and vehicles available. After
every 15 days factory’s main office sends harvesting schedules to respective gut
office. Gut office follows the schedule.
How Schedule Works?
Once Gut office received schedule, they call farmers in sequence as per schedule.
Then Gut office creates slip. This slip is given to driver. After harvesting of sugarcane
when vehicle reach to factory, driver has to show that slip on weighing point.
Person on weight point create new slip, on which details related to owner and
weight is mentioned.
Payment –
Payment is directly credited to farmers account after deducting all interests.
Payment is credited within 15 days.
Finished Product-
After processing, sugar is sent to storage god owns and segmented according to
size. Sugar is sold by online tender process. Most of the factories practicing FIFO
(First in First Out) method for selling the stock.
Sugar is sold on two different rates-
1. Factory provides sugar card to every shareholder & employees. On that sugar
card every shareholder & employee get 50 kg of sugar at discounted price
(Currently, this price is Rs. 24 / kg; whereas Market price is Rs. 40/ kg). Also,
Farmers get additional sugar on this card based on amount of sugarcane
provided by farmer. Farmer get 1 kg sugar for providing 1 MT Sugarcane. For
E.g., If a farmer provides 40 MT of sugarcane, then he will get additional 40
 kg of sugar. It means overall, 90 kg sugar will be issue on farmers sugar card
(50 kg mandatory + 40 kg additional).

2. Second rate is tender rate. Factory ask Official license holders to fill out the
tender and the one with high rate is get selected.

Technology –
Factories have their own web portal. On that web portal, farmers can see the
weights of their sugarcane, slip number, time by entering their code number.
Farmer get notify by message of weights on their register mobile number.

Enter code number

List

Date and
Slip time of Code Name Village Net
Number No. of of Zone
weight Name Weight
Farmer Farmer
Farmer just have to enter with his code number on portal in weight section. It
shows whole details.

Above page is only showing details of single day. Below page is showing details of
farmers overall supply of season.

Most of the time it is observed that gut office employees manipulating dates of
registration and sometimes even, they don’t register the crop and on the other
hand factory prefers harvesting of register crop only. It creates conflict between
farmer and factory.so to avoid this and increase transparency in process, Factories
started using technology in registration Process.
Now-a-days, Sugar factories are focusing on using technology in registration of
sugarcane. Some factories are using technology of online registration from field. In
which the office boy visits the field, enter details of farmer and then walks around
the field and measures the planted area by using GPS.

We can create farmer friendly easily accessible system for registrations of

sugarcane.
Also, A unique system for farmer will be beneficial. A system like Student profile
system. Where you have to just enter your mobile number and password, it will
show your all details like, registration date, variety, Fertilizer loan and its interest,
weights of sugar cane, payment related details, etc.

Cooperative sugar factories are ideally working to achieve Break Even Point (No
profit – No loss situation). Even it is also difficult for Cooperative sugar factories to
operate on BEP. So, for them a product that add values to their existing process and
specially at a decent cost, will be great.

Website of Kadwa Sugar-

https://www.kadwasugar.com