Sugarcane farmers from northern Karnataka in southwest India are seeking price advantage by selling their cane to mills in neighboring Maharashtra.
Maharashtra is offering as high as 3,500 rupees ($39.66) per tonne of cane including transportation costs, drawing cross-state farmers.
Even so, growers are readying to protest on October 30, 2025 at Belgavi to agitate for similar rates as Maharashtra’s, according to Chini Mandi.
They demand that Belgavi’s 28 mills input transport costs for all deliveries in imitation of their choice mills across the border.
The issue has come to a crux because local factories have stuck with a maximum offer at 3,050 rupees ($34.66)/kg.
With Karnataka north beginning its cane crushing season early November, its factories could experience a delivery no show under current rates.
Some 25,000 growers from the region of Kittur are already cashing in their cane away from the state.
Farmers find Grass Greener on the Other Side
The alternative delivery locale remains Kolhapur in Maharashtra, which includes distance costs to pay 3,400 to 3,500 rupees ($38.52-39.66) a tonne.
Another lure is the fact that Maharashtra’s mills settle payment within half a month while Karnataka’s are protracted.
According to the Hindustan Times, “Karnataka’s sugar mills…have not cleared payments” going back to 2023.
The Times quoted Chunappa Pujeri, head of the Karnataka Rajya Raita Sangha association, saying payments often pend for over 12 months.
The state’s farm-gate rate at 2,900-3,050 rupees ($32.86-34.66) a tonne (t) undermines the all-India cane price minimum at 3,500 rupees/t.
But local mills defend their pricing mode on the relatively low sugar conversion rate here. In Belgavi district, for instance, the recovery rate oscillates at a low of 9.5-12.8%.
A reason for the low recovery rate is shifting rain seasonality, which further cuts cane sugar content.
Others attribute the price lapse to the outdated machinery in Karnataka’s mills that extend crushing by half a year.
Be it as it may, on the 30th the protest in Karnataka by sugarcane farmers could register the state’s supply realities. Skim the below statistics to see some of these realities in this major cane state of India.
Karnataka Sugarcane and Sugar Industry Statistics
The southwest India state of Karnataka ranks 3rd in sugar and 4th in sugarcane production nationally. Cane output hit some 36.76 million tonnes 2021, according to research on the International Journal of Novel Research & Development (IJNRD). This production earns the state taxes worth 360,000,000 rupees ($4,078,800) a year, as of 2021.
The 2022-23 season ranks among the highest cane-producing years in the state at 70,500,000 tonnes, per the Hindustan Times. Production would then slash to an estimated 52,000,000 tonnes in the 2023-24 season.
In terms of acreage, Karnataka’s cane area grew by 1.76% in the 30 years ending 2021, to 480,000 hectares, per the IJNRD. Most of the cultivated area covers such northern districts as Bagalkot and Bidar as well as Belgaum and Vijayapur.
Sugar production in Karnataka on the other hand embraces the entire sweeteners industry. Its end products include gur (jaggery), white sugar and khandsari. While gur and khandsari sweeteners are minor niches, white sugar production is huge and a mandate of mills. There were 41 mills in 2005, which increased to 77 in 2023. These produced some 1,798,000 tonnes of raw sugar in the 2002-3 timeline. Twenty years later in the 2023-24 season, the total output had tripled to 3,451,000 tonnes. This was in itself a 42% decline from 2022-23’s 5,981,000 tonnes.
Ethanol production is another dispensation of Karnataka’s sugarcane industry. In the 2022-23 season, production hit 350,000,000 liters.