The two-day Experience Sharing Workshop on More with Less – Better Management Practices for Improving Productivity in Sugarcane was held on the 20th and 21st of August 2009. The objective of this two-day workshop is to share experiences and provide opportunity for cross learning among progressive sugarcane farmers from various states such as Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra who have made innovations and are practicing better management practices in sugarcane in order to reduce costs of cultivation and improve productivity of sugarcane per unit of land, water, labour and capital.

As a part of this endeavor, a call was given to farmers by The Consortium of Indian Farmers Association (CIFA) and National Sugarcane Commodity Committee. The insights gathered from all progressive sugarcane farmers will enable all the farmers to come together and design future strategies and approaches to make sugarcane cultivation economically and ecologically viable and sustain the sugar sector overcoming the current maladies. A Compendium of Innovative Sugarcane Farmers in India is also being planned and for this, information was sought from the farmers about their experiences in innovative sugarcane cultivation as well as their personal information.

Sponsored by and instrumental behind the entire initiative is the efforts of ICRISAT-WWF project. World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) have partnered together to explore options for ‘Improving the water productivity in agriculture’. Currently working on rice with the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative (SSI) in sugarcane, the project is specifically looking at farm-based approaches based on principles of ‘more with less’ in agriculture. The highly successful methods and practices increase the profitability of the farmers significantly while reducing the inputs — water, fertilizer, seed material — and improving the productivity of water, land and labour. This project is directly relevant to the broader goals of both the WWF and ICRISAT with respect to improving the lives and livelihoods of millions of farmers and reducing the ecological footprint on planet earth without compromising on the food security.

The first day of the Workshop, after the participant’s registration formalities, Shri. K. Prabhakar Reddy, Convenor, CIFA welcomed all the participants and greeted the farmers who he said have been part of this process of sharing the management practices for the last 10-15 years. He also thanked Shri. P. Lakshmi Narayana, the Commissioner, Sugarcane; Dr. Hapse, Dr. Biksham Gujja Team Leader, ICRISAT-WWF project; Dr. M.V. Naidu, the Principal Scientist from Ankapalli Regional Research Station; Dr. Vinod Goud, Special Project Scientist, ICRISAT-WWF project, Farmers, representatives from Sugar mills and many other dignitaries and participants for their presence at the 2–day workshop irrespective of heavy rains and bad weather. He said that SRI in paddy is the inspiration and this form of cultivation is very closely related to SSI cultivation of sugarcane. SSI method in sugarcane cultivation concentrates both on saving water as well as amount of land needed to be brought under cultivation, when compared to traditional methods, though the latter point is not realized by many. The utilization of the land comes down by around 1/3rd the required area and the rest of the land can be used for intercropping, the harvests of which in turn contribute in earning the farmers the expenditure invested for sugarcane.

Dr. Hapse, in his address requested all to consider that, the cost of production is going up, the prices of various factors related to production and yields are coming down as a result of which the total sugar production itself is going down. This in turn affects the price, growth, sugar release, imports and exports, etc. He said all that he wanted to convey was that a farmer should be able to earn at least One Lakh Rupees per acre as profit and the cost and benefit ratio for the farmer for any cropping should not exceed 1:6, which means for every Rupee a farmer spends he should get a net profit of 6 Rupees. One Rupee will be his capital for the crop, one or two Rupees will be invested and the rest of the amount can be used for the welfare of his family.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Biksham Gujja, Team Leader of the ICRISAT-WWF Project too the opportunity to introduce the Manual to the participants which he said would prove valuable to each farmer and said this was only the beginning and it was hoped that this manual would be revised and all the suggestions from this Workshop and later would be incorporated in it.

Water is going to become the most critical issue in this country to the farmers in the near future and irrespective of whether the government can live up to its promises, it cannot obviously manufacture water and distribute it. It must also be realized that farmers have reached the top end in the consumption of water in this country and so now they will have to learn to produce more with less, less water, less fertilizer, less seed.

Delivering the Special Message, Dr. Lakshmi Narayana, IAS, Commissioner of Sugarcane, Government of Andhra Pradesh said he was indeed happy to see the presence of farmers’ associations participating in the Workshop which will be beneficial to all farmers. It is indeed heartening to see such a platform where the scientist, agriculturalist and administrators are all sitting in one place and getting to know the specific problems each is facing in this field, and at least by the end of the two days there should be a way out of these problems and appropriate corrective measures are evolved.

He said that Indian farmers are the best managers because right from the time that he arises, a farmer has to take care of a number of things and this has been required from him from generation to generation. Due to several reasons these management practices have become slightly diluted which is the reason why there is a need to reinvent. Most of the works associated with agriculture have been developed over centuries through trial and error, which is also the reason why some of the measures tried by the fore fathers of farmers have become either diluted or completely forgotten. He added that, it is indeed wonderful that SSI is getting such wide publicity and as soon as the manual was released, word came from the Chief Minister and meetings were convened the very next day with the Assistant Cane Commissioners and Managing Directors as well as mangers of mills, both public and private to discuss at greater length about the SSI methods and how to disseminate the information. Efforts will be taken up in the recent future to get the manual translated into Telugu, gather more information from the farmers who are attending the Workshop and add it to the manual, so that it can be brought out in the vernacular languages, not only in Telugu but in Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, etc. This work is important as a farmer would and should be able to understand the contents of this manual clearly and that is possible only in his own language where the transmission of information is real. Language is a powerful tool which is essential to remember in this work. All the outcomes of the discussions as part of the Workshop should be able to reach all the farmers in all the states. It only when the manual is in regional language can a farmer understand the new concepts and technologies and become convinced to experiment the same on his fields.

Mr. Lakshmi Narayana concluded by saying that each and everyone concerned with this sector should be in a position to take up the cause of Sugar.

Following this, other speakers and farmers from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharahtar and Tamil Nadu presented their experiences in sugarcane cultivation, inspiring others with different aspects and dimensions of Better Management practices in sugarcane cultivation.

The detailed report with ppt’s will be made available soon.