If you are a sugarcane farmer in UP, chances are you’ll have more processed sugar than cash. A severe liquidity crunch has forced state-run cooperative sugar factories to pay cane growers in kind. So there are farmers who have huge stocks of sugar (500-700 quintals), which they have to sell in the open market to convert it into cash. But local sugar prices fall when a desperate farmer tries to sell his stock! That means less money than the minimum support price. The farmers are planning a protest in Lucknow against being thus shortchanged. But the state government is clear that it’s cash-strapped.
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