PESHAWAR, Nov 24: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is in a fix as sugar manufacturers are not ready to pay sugar cane farmers even their actual cost of production setting them to incur losses, according to sources.

The mills want the provincial government to set the sugar cane support price at Rs170 per 40 kilogram, sources told Dawn.

`The manufacturers enjoy a strong bargaining position since they can procure crop from Punjab where the price has been fixed at Rs170 per 40 kg for this marketing season,` said Abdul Samad Saafi, the general secretary of Kissan Board, a growers` organisation.

The price suggested by millers, confirmed an official source, was even less than the growers` cost of production calculated by the directorate of agriculture extension.

It informed the sugar cane control board on November 20 last that sugar cane growers, on the average,spent Rs185 to produce 40 kg of crop yield in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Farmers claim that their cost of production comes to Rs220 per 40 kg. They want the government to fix the support price at Rs250 per 40 kg.

`The sugar cane control board`s meeting on Nov 20 last remained inconclusive because growers and millers were not ready to budge from their position,` said Naimat Shah Roghani, a representative of growers on the board.

He said the mills` representatives put in plain words that they would not pay more than the Rs170 per 40 kg.

The sugar cane marketing dynamics, according to sources, favour the millers.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has seven sugar mills. Four of them are in district Dera Ismail Khan, bordering with some of the sugar cane growing districts of Punjab.

Dera Ismail Khan, according to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government`s figures, produces around 42,000 kg sugar cane every year.However, that does not fulfil the local mills consumption requirements. As a result, the mills procure a much larger quantity of sugar cane from Punjab to maintain their milling operations.

`The mills in Dera Ismail Khan procure local produce at the end of the harvesting season and in the beginning they rely on purchases from Bhakkar and Darya Khan in Punjab,` said Mr Saafi.

The sugar cane growers in Dera Ismail Khan, he added, did not produce gur (low quality brown sugar) as a result they had to rely on local sugar mills.

Whereas, in the central Khyber Pakhtunkhwa`s sugar cane growing districts of Mardan, Charsadda, Swabi, and Peshawar, the cottage industry of gur making, said Mr Saafi, provided an alternative choice to sugar cane growers.

Several of the growers in the central Pakhtunkhwa districts, said Mr Roghani, diverted their produce to gur making units to avoid open mar-ket price haggling by middlemen and commission agents.

As a result of disagreement between growers and mills over the support price issue in the Nov 20, last meeting, the sugar cane commissioner (the director food) would move the matter to Chief Minister Pervez Khattak with a set of recommendations for setting the support price for this year`s sugar cane crushing season.

Officials told Dawn that mills wanted the price to be fixed at Rs170 per 40 kg on the pretext that if Punjab`s farmers were fine with that price then the same should be acceptable for growers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

When this question was put to Mr Roghani, he said Punjab had a better per acre yield than Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. `They (growers in Punjab) get 700 to 800 kg per acre whereas farmers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on the average get 500 kg per acre,` said Mr Roghani, the president of Anjuman-i-Kashtkaran, another organisation of growers.

He said per acreage yield differ-ence caused escalation in cost of production in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Growers complained the provincial government had delayed the price fixing process as a result their sufferings had doubled.

According to Mr Roghani and Mr Saafi, the government should have announced the support price in the first week of November. `Since Punjab had not announced the price, our provincial government did not initiate the process in time, said Mr Saafi. He said mills were legally required to commence the sugar cane crushing season (sugar manufacturing) latest by the end of November every year.

However, officials of the directorate of food, when contacted, did not agree.

They said the crushing season should legally be commenced by Nov 30.

Growers said their cropping fields would remain occupied for a longer period because of delay in the commencement of the crushing season.

This would delay wheat cultivation in some of the districts, said Mr Roghani.