REASONS FOR LOW SUGARCANE PRODUCTION IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

The present study conducted with the aim to examine the various reasons for the low sugarcane production. The study area for the said task was District Charsadda. For this purpose primary data has been collected through a comprehensive face-to-face interview from fourty (40) different agriculturists and secondary data has obtained from the Economic Survey of Pakistan (2006-07). Sugarcane crop is an important cash crop of Pakistan and its registered share in GDP is 3.4 % and its production for the year 2005-06 is estimated as 44312 tonns. Sugarcane has been sown in the area of 907000 hectares during 2005-06. The Punjab province accounts for 60-65% of the area under sugarcane, Sindh 25-30%, NWFP about 10%, and Balochistan less than 1 % respectively. It is also remains a cash crop for the agriculturists of Charsadda, Mardan, Peshawar and Swabi districts. It has been observed that factors influencing sugarcane production are natural factors like rainfall, frost, salinity and logging. Like wise agricultural and policy factors are small holding, outdated technology, low yielding varieties, illiteracy, and lack of irrigation facilities also effecting sugarcane production. Similarly economic factors are such as variation in prices, and lack of support price policy. In addition sugarcane diseases, high price of fertilizer input and lack of credit are other factors causing low productivity. Further, it has been found that the prices paid by sugar mill owners in the NWFP province are comparatively lower than those paid in other provinces, while the returns from gur production are better as compared to those obtained from the sugar-mills. All of the agriculturist suggests that the government should provide subsidized inputs and also encourage gur production to improve returns from sugarcane.