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By Reuters
MUMBAI / NEW YORK – India faces potential delays in harvesting its large sugarcane crop, threatening the international source, as millions of migrant workers needed to harvest would possibly fear as coronavirus infections accumulate across the country.
Sugar zafra in India begins in October, when other primary manufacturers stop operations, but the country’s industry is not mechanized, it depends on migrant staff moving around the country to cut sugar cane, but with 3. 7 million coronavirus infections, the third in the Worldwide, it is feared that cultivation can serve as a vector for new infections in India.
Delays in harvesting would cause Indian generators to produce sugar more slowly at a time when Brazilian sugar production will slow down and the Thai manufacturer is harvesting its smallest crop in 10 years, reducing the availability of sugar on the world market.
Slow grinding in India may bring overall costs closer to their highest levels in five months.
“We expect delays at the beginning of the season. A lot depends on the amount of paints held at the local point and the spread of coronavirus in October,” BB said. ).
India produces 370 million tons of cane consistently with the year, time for Brazil in the world, but mechanization accounts for about 5% of paints in a country employing nearly 50 million sugarcane manufacturers and 700 factories, according to the government.
“Fear of being inflamed may lead some staff members to settle for less lucrative paintings around their position of origin,” Thombare said.
Sugar factories in the generating states of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat rely on seasonal hard work to harvest sugar cane, and many of the employees may not come this year, he said.
“I Maharashtra has between 700,000 and 900,000 sugarcane cutters traveling from the state and other states,” said Michael McDougall, managing director of the Paragon Global Markets agricultural products broker in New York. The harvest rate in the largest generating state will depend on the amount of movement allowed between states and the willingness of staff to travel, he said.
The Brazilian sugar industry is almost entirely mechanized and the farms are larger, making it less difficult for factories to invest in machinery. The wonderful mechanization helped Brazil cope with the pandemic and stop sugar cane zaphra without problems, which began in April. .
In India, the maximum sugarcane crop is done manually in very small areas, these farmers do not have the capital to buy a device that can charge around $200,000, but the ingenuities, which farmers harvest and send the sugar cane to the plant, are doing it little by little. Investment.
Jakraya Sugar, a plant founded in Solapur in western Maharashtra state, which has reported the number of coronavirus infections in India, has seven sugarcane harvesters and has placed orders for 15 more to trump labor shortages, said Sachin Jadhav, general. manager. ” One device replaces about a hundred workers,” he said.
Sugar producers approached sugarcane producers such as CNH Industrial to load the machines before the start of the grinding season in October. “Since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, we have noticed a marked increase in sales demands and orders for sugarcane harvesters. CNH Industrial told Reuters.
Prakash Naiknavare, director general of the National Federation of Sugar Cooperatives Ltd, said factories rushed to buy machinery and said the country’s factories had recently placed orders for more than two hundred sugarcane harvesters.
(Report through Rajendra Jadhav and Marcelo Teixeira; Editing through David Gaffen and Leslie Adler)
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