PESHAWAR, Feb 12: Low profits recorded against their sugarcane produce have sent shock waves among the growers as they say a strong clique has cheated them in the absence of a policy to protect their interest.

The restrictions on exporting gur to Afghanistan, the growers told Dawn on Sunday, left many cultivators in central and northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa high and dry as many of them barely managed to achieve a breakeven point and others recorded profits lower than the previous year, according to cultivators.

“Growers in Swabi are switching over to sugar beet,” Khalid Khan, a sugarcane grower said, adding “this is a new trend as some of them have cultivated beet for the first time on test basis, dejected by lower sugarcane profits this year.”

According to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Directorate of Agriculture Extension’s data, the province is set to end up this year with higher than the last year’s sugarcane produce. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to the director general agriculture extension, had produced over four million tons of sugarcane in 2010-11 when the total area under the crop stood at 88,405 hectares.

“This year, the area under sugarcane is higher than 2010-11 and produce is also expected to be far more than the last year’s figure,” said the government official.

However, the improvement, said sugarcane growers, had not benefited the growers. Like Mr Khalid, Ikramullah Khan, a sugarcane grower and a consultant, said the government’s ban on the supply of gur to Afghanistan was flawed and based on ill-intensions.

“The ban is likely to be removed once the middlemen lifts the entire crop produce from the market,” said Mr Khan, adding “then they would make billions of rupees in connivance with people holding important positions in the government.”

The ban on gur’s exports has seen its price in the local markets plummeted this year to Rs8,000 per 150-180kg from Rs16,000 last year. The ban has triggered a decline in its demand in the local market, making the farmers to sell their produce to sugar mills.

Mr Khalid, who is also the District Swabi president of Kisan Board, an organization of farmers, said a majority of the growers in Swabi, Mardan, Charsadda, and parts of Peshawar cultivated sugarcane to produce gur for its onward supply to Afghanistan.

This year, according to him, most of the growers are compelled to sell their crop produce to sugar mills. On the average, the price of sugarcane in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is around Rs150 per 40kg.

Mr Khalid said he was lucky to fetch a price of Rs204 per 40kg because he managed to harvest the crop a few days ahead of the current chilly weather set in.

“I am hopeful to achieve the breakeven point,” said Mr Khalid. He said he cultivated the crop on around three acres with his cost of production standing at around Rs50,000 per acre.

Many of the farmers, he added, would not be lucky like him as, according to him, their crop’s quality had suffered due to the current cold weather.

Mr Ikramullah Khan, who is a federal government’s consultant on agriculture, said the farmers ended up with a 50 per cent less profit this year as compared to 2010-11 due to a sharp reduction in the crop’s price.

Mr Khan said the provincial government did not have a policy to protect the sugarcane growers’ interest and the federal government’s policy, he added, had never been implemented to the growers’ disadvantage.

“The five years’ plans put in place by successive government failed to achieve even 10 per cent of the targets, rendering substantial losses to agriculture sector,” said Mr Khan.

Demanding a fresh agriculture policy with a special emphasis on protecting the economic interest of sugarcane growers, Zahir Shah Khan, press secretary of Sarhad Chamber of Agriculture, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said that the growers would stop cultivating sugarcane if the provincial government let the current situation happened again.

“No one would cultivate sugarcane in future,” he said.

Like Mr Khalid, he also said that the government should establish a separate institution on the pattern of the Tobacco Board to regulate sugarcane prices, introducing a price control mechanism.