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Karnataka is planning to make drip irrigation mandatory for sugarcane growers.
“We will make it mandatory from February 2015 for all sugarcane farmers to switch over to drip irrigation from traditional methods being practised at present. We plan to roll out a scheme through a tripartite agreement involving sugar mills (factories), farmers and the government,” State Minister for Water Resources MB Patil said.
3-year target The ₹4,500-crore scheme is to shift the entire 4.34 lakh hectares of sugarcane farms involving 5-7 lakh farmers to drip irrigation in three years. The shift to drip irrigation is fallout of crop violation.
Patil said, “The government is concerned that only 50,000 acres are officially permitted in the State. The remaining 10.4 lakh acres are crop violations. The sugar mills and farmers have to accept this new norm.”
The government is awaiting the response of the Centre to the proposal. At present it costs ₹40,000 per acre to switch over to drip irrigation. The State government is planning to spend ₹10,000 per acre. Sugar mills have to contribute ₹5,000. This constitutes 37.5 per cent of the project cost.
“We are trying to increase it to 50 per cent through corporate involvement by way of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The rest will be raised by way of loan to farmers, wherein sugar mills stand guarantee to the farmers. The loan amount is expected to be recovered in three cropping cycle,” said Patil.
“The State government has had a preliminary meeting with major public sand private sector banks on providing loans through a sponsor or banks in the form of a soft loan,” he added.
Benefits Elucidating the benefits of switching over to drip irrigation, Patil said the scheme would increase area under sugarcane, improve yield, savings from seeds, fertiliser and labour there by proving farmers income by about 80 per cent.
Incremental benefit to farmers is ₹81,746 per acre, incremental benefit to sugar mills is ₹25,668 per acre and incremental benefit of new system to government is ₹1.87 lakh per acre.
Sugar mills will also benefit through incremental sugar recovery.
The State government will be able to save 250 to 300 TMC feet of water.
Savings in power consumption will also be enormous, it was stated.
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