Maharashtra is India’s largest sugar-producing state but the drought-prone state will need very good reasons to continue favouring the water-guzzling crop, especially when it’s battling its worst drought in 40 years.

Sugarcane, one of the most water-intensive crops grown in the state, requires 10 times more water than jowar or nut and around 80% is ironically grown in regions that have a history of water scarcity.

The area under cultivation for sugarcane is only around 16% of the total cultivable land in the state, according to a 2005 World Bank report, but sugarcane consumes around 70% of the total water available through the irrigation system for farming in the state. Read More

Jyothi Shankaran

    Jyothi’s last role was as Senior Editor with the business news channel Bloomberg TV India. He also worked as News Editor at business-standard.com, the online version of the business newspaper Business Standard. Jyothi is a chemical engineer from the Regional Engineering College, Srinagar.