Why India’s ethanol push is not benefitting farmers
· Scroll
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When Dharmendra Raghuwanshi and Kapil Khatiyan began farming decades ago, they did not imagine that their crops could contribute to India’s fuel needs. But eight years ago, an Indian government policy shift paved the way for just such a scenario.
Raghuwanshi is a farmer in the village of Patlon, in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara district, who cultivates 32 acres of land. On about five acres, he grows sugarcane, while on the rest, he grows maize.
Khatiyan is a farmer in Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli district, around 110 km from New Delhi, who cultivates sugarcane on around 17 acres of land.
On paper, Raghuwanshi and Khatiyan both stood to benefit from a series of government moves, starting in 2018, that were aimed at encouraging the production of ethanol in the country. The key step that the Modi government took was the mandating of an increased blending of biofuels, like ethanol, with diesel and petrol. It said this would reduce India’s “dependence on imported fossil fuels” and save the country precious foreign exchange.
To ensure that oil marketing companies could meet mandated blending targets, the government modified rules to allow the use of food crops like sugarcane and corn to make ethanol. Earlier, it was largely made from molasses, a by-product of sugar manufacturing.
The government...