Why Bihari Farmers Are Looking to Sell Their Sugarcane in Nepal -Umesh Kumar Ray

-TheWire.in

The closure of a sugar mill has left farmers in Sitamarhi and Sheohar with no other option.

Sitamarhi (Bihar): Farmer Gunanand Chaudhary of Hirolwa, Majorganj block in Bihar’s Sitamarhi had cultivated sugarcane on a 25-acre field. When the district’s only sugar mill, Riga Sugar Mill, announced that it won’t be opening this year, it came as a shock. Thankfully, Nepal is just four km from his village.

Chaudhary has so far sold 700 quintals of sugarcane to Nepal. “In the sugar mill of Nepal, we have sold sugarcane at the rate of Rs 215 per quintal. I currently have about 1,000 quintals of sugarcane. I am trying to sell it all in Nepal,” he told The Wire.

Riga Sugar Mill is one of the oldest sugar mills in Bihar. It was founded in 1933, and later acquired by the Kolkata-based Dhanuka Group. Approximately 50,000 sugarcane farmers from Sheohar, Muzaffarpur and Sitamarhi reportedly supplied sugarcane to this mill – and the majority were from Sitamarhi.

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