Webinar on ‘Combating post COVID-19 challenges in the sugarcane sector through appropriate technologies and approaches’
The ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding
Institute, Coimbatore organized a webinar on ‘Combating post-COVID-19
challenges in the sugarcane sector through appropriate technologies and
approaches’ on 25 June 2020.
Inaugurating
the webinar, Smt. Reeta Harish Thakkar IAS, Commissioner of Sugar, Government
of Tamil Nadu and Managing Director, Tamil Nadu Sugar Corporation, said that
this webinar is a welcome initiative from ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute.
Since the day lockdown was announced in March, many sugar factories in the
state have been operating with only 30-40% of capacity utilization. The
Government of Tamil Nadu has been taking several steps to revive the sugar
sector such as providing transport subsidy @ Rs.100/ton of cane, disbursement
of NADP subsidy amount and extending the production subsidy and
micro-irrigation scheme under PMKSY (Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana)
for 2020-21 as well.
Dr
Bakshi Ram, Director of ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute in his opening
remarks remarked that both the sugarcane farmers and the sugar mills have been
suffering during the COVID-19 crisis. Mentioning that this webinar has been
structured in such a way that the sharing of knowledge would help in overcoming
the post pandemic challenges; he informed that the webinar was being held to
cover the following topics:
- Challenges of Human Resource Management
in Sugarcane Agriculture and Sugar Industry: Issues such as
manpower requirements for cane cultivation and for a sugar factory,
decreasing trend of agricultural labour availability, challenges of
agricultural workforce during COVID-19, inter-state movement of farm
labour, risk mitigation strategies and modification of the work-flow
process to suit the present conditions were emphasized.
- Sugarcane agriculture: Combating
challenges in the post-COVID-19 scenario – Assumptions pertaining to the post
COVID-19 scenario, Short-term and long-term impacts and mitigation
strategies at the research and extension levels were discussed.
- Responding to mechanization
challenges in the post-pandemic
period:
Issues such as acute scarcity of farm labour, escalating cane harvest
charges, reduction in cost of cultivation due to mechanization, merits of
wider row spacing, varietal preferences, weed management, intercropping
issues, custom-hiring of implements and promoting entrepreneur models were
highlighted.
- Sugar market : Challenges and responses
post-COVID-19: Global, National and state-level sugar production, sugar consumption
pattern, Revenue sharing formula Vs Fair and remunerative price and impact of COVID-19 on the sugar market
were discussed.
- Challenges and opportunities for
Micro-irrigation in sugarcane: Issues such as improving cane yield and quality
in micro-irrigated plots, persisting lack of adoption among farmers,
assistance from the government-side, lack of awareness on irrigation
scheduling and problems in system maintenance were shared.
- Emerging sugarcane pests and diseases: Solutions for Pokkah
boeng disease and for pests in sugarcane such as leaf mite, mealy bug and
white grub were discussed.
The
distinguished speakers at the webinar were Shri M Silvester, Kothari Sugars and
Chemicals Ltd., Shri S.J. Lakshman, EID Parry (I) Ltd., Shri K Nagendran,
Sugarcane specialist, Shri R Varadarajan, Rajshree Sugars & Chemicals Ltd.,
Shri N Sezhian, Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd. and Dr R Viswanathan,
ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute.
Over
660 participants from 19 states of the country and 5 foreign
countries had registered and participated. The webinar was held for over
five hours and was moderated by Dr D Puthira Prathap, Principal Scientist of
ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute.
The
final event of the webinar was the Q&A session. Over 100 questions on the post COVID-19
issues pertaining to the sugarcane sector were posed by the participants out of
which a few were answered by each speaker during the session. A compilation of
the complete Q&As would be carried out for wider distribution among the
participants.
While
proposing a vote of thanks from the industry side to the Institute, Shri S.J.
Lakshman appreciated the efforts of the ICAR-SBI in providing solutions to
various problems faced by the industry and the farmers. He specially mentioned
about the two recent initiatives of the institute viz. quality seed production
under farmers participatory programme and releasing the short duration
sugarcane variety Co 11015, which will help the sugar industry in the long run.
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