Sugar is produced in the Cane Field and not in the Sugar Factory. Sugar cane constitutes 90% of the manufacturing cost of sugar and the viability of sugar factory solely depends on the availability of sugarcane from cane growing areas for crushing in the factory. After the innumerable factories that have come up, the area under sugarcane in Bijnor as well as nearby districts had already been reorganised and accordingly our command area has been reduced by around 35% as compared to earlier years. It is a well known fact that our area under cultivation has reached saturation, therefore there is no scope of increasing that area any further. Therefore, for strategic reasons we continously educate the farmers to adopt the best agriculture practices systematically so that per acre yield of cane is increased.
Additionally, the number of seminars in close co-ordination with U.P. Council for Sugarcane Research, Shahjahanpur and Muzaffarnagar were organized. In all the seminars not only the Scientists but also the officers of the Cane Dept. of the factory emphasized the need to adopt various improved agricultural practices for increasing the yield of the sugarcanefield. For convincing the farmers they had been shown the documentary films and fields in which practices have been adopted.
Though the farmers know very well that by increasing the yield of cane in their fields, they will get better return on their investments. It is not easy to influence the farmers within a span of two years. Therefore, the Company has been continuously organizing such seminars. For increasing the per acre yield of cane as well as quality of sugarcane, we have been carrying out the Research and Development work in close co-ordination with the U.P. Council of Sugarcane Research, Shahjahanpur in the following specific areas:
* Heat treatment therapy to treat cane seed to make it disease free and get high yield of sugarcane per acre of land.
* Maintenance of nucleus nurseries and three tier seed nurseries to provide new high yielding high sugar content seeds to growers to boost sugarcane production and to get more recovery.
* Biological control through bio-pesticides laboratory to protect and control sugar cane from pests/ disease.
* Ratoon management by managing the ratoon crop of cane to increase yield. The spraying of insecticides on ratoon crop and gap filling of ratoon etc. are being practised with extension work.
* Seed multiplication through single bud culture of new varieties.
* Collection and analysis of soil samples from different fields for better application of manure.
* Testing promising varieties for their performance through All India & Zonal Varietal Trials.
* Extending the area of early maturing high sugar content sugarcane varieties to get better recovery in early months of cane crushing.
* Providing disease free seed of high sugared varieties to the cane growers on credit basis, so that they are encouraged to replace their old rejected variety cane crop with the crop having high sucrose content.
* Transportation of seed having high sucrose content in huge quantities from Punjab and Western U.P. for distribution amongst the cane growers of our area.
* Distribution of urea and pesticides to the growers on subsidised rates by the company
* Introduction of efficient harvesting and transport systems so that supply of clean and fresh cane is ensured to our factory, which in turn has drastically reduced the time gap between harvesting and crushing.
