Impact of Wonder Cane Varieties on Sugar Production, Consumption and Prices in India

Being the largest consumer of sugar, India had relied on sugar imports during the first decade of twenty-first century. However, advent of wonder varieties developed by Sugarcane Breeding Institute of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR-SBI) has revolutionized sugar production since 2010, and the country has turned into a sugar exporter since 2016. The objective of the study is to analyse the impact of such wonder varieties on sugar production, consumption and prices. Here, sugar prices were compared with the WPI of primary articles and analysed for a possible difference in the prices with and without adjusting for inflation. It was found that, sugar prices were lesser than the inflation adjusted sugar price during the study period (2010–2022), depicting the impact of production surplus in meeting the rise in consumption demand. Although domestic sugar prices were over and above the global sugar prices, the prices remained stable with no short-term spike in the sugar prices. It is therefore evident that the wonder varieties have not only created production surplus but also stabilized sugar prices during the study period. Using the historic time series data, ARIMA results revealed that the demand for sugar would be around 341.64 lakh tonnes by 2032–33, which is expected to grow at an annual average rate of 1.55 per cent per annum. The study suggests a sustained sugarcane and sugar production in the country to protect the domestic market from global price shocks taking into account the fuel ethanol production for EBP (ethanol blended petroleum) programme.