STNMTZ_20211113_22680.TIF | George Steinmetz

Uttar Pradesh, India
Harvest time at one of the largest sugar and ethanol factories in India. The company owns no farmland and buys all its sugarcane from some 80,000 local farmers who bring their cane from up to 30 miles away. Sugarcane is the main cash crop here, and most farmers have less than 2 hectares of land with a total of 60,000 hectares under cultivation to supply this factory. There are land ceiling laws across India that prohibit the consolidation of agricultural land into larger farms or plantations, so mechanized harvest is not an economic option. Agriculture is heavily regulated by the Indian Government, which sets the price that the factory pays farmers for sugar and the minimum the factory will get for its refined sugar, ethanol, and electricity.

Filename: STNMTZ_20211113_22680.TIF
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Uttar Pradesh, India<br />
Harvest time at one of the largest sugar and ethanol factories in India. The company owns no farmland and buys all its sugarcane from some 80,000 local farmers who bring their cane from up to 30 miles away. Sugarcane is the main cash crop here, and most farmers have less than 2 hectares of land with a total of 60,000 hectares under cultivation to supply this factory. There are land ceiling laws across India that prohibit the consolidation of agricultural land into larger farms or plantations, so mechanized harvest is not an economic option. Agriculture is heavily regulated by the Indian Government, which sets the price that the factory pays farmers for sugar and the minimum the factory will get for its refined sugar, ethanol, and electricity.