Responding to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s letter on the sugarcane price issue, Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Pralhad Joshi has written back suggesting that Karnataka announce State Advisory Price (SAP) like in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Haryana.Mr. Siddaramaiah, who has been urging the Centre to help agitating farmers by hiking the fair and remunerative price (FRP), which is fixed by the Centre, on Friday announced an additional ₹100 (now ₹3,300 per tonne), with the State government and factory owners paying ₹50 each.The Chief Minister has been taunting MPs from Karnataka for not speaking up for the State’s farmers and urging the Centre to hike FRP.CACP recommendationMr. Joshi, in his letter, said that the Central government fixed the FRP of sugarcane for every sugar season (October-September) on the recommendations of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP).“The approved FRP of ₹355 per quintal for 2025-26 covers the cost of production for all sugarcane-producing States and gives a margin of 105.2% over the cost of production. With each increase of recovery by 0.1%, farmers will get additional ₹3.46 per quintal. At average recovery of 10.5% in Karnataka, FRP will be ₹363 per quintal. There has been appreciable increase in FRP in the past decade,” he said in the letter.The Union Minister said that the powers for enforcing the provisions of the Sugarcane Control (Order), 1966, to ensure timely payment to the farmers within 14 days was vested with the State governments and the Karnataka government could announce SAP like in U.P., Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Haryana.Mr. Joshi said that the Union government had, under various schemes, provided financial assistance of about ₹16,500 crore during 2014-15 to 2020-21 to sugar mills to enable them to clear the cane dues of farmers. To address the problem of excess sugar, the Centre had been encouraging sugar mills to utilise excess sugarcane to ethanol.Ethanol blending“Till year 2013, supply of ethanol to oil marketing companies (OMCs) was only 38 crore litres with blending levels of only 1.53%, which has now been increased to about 1,001 crore litres with 20% blending... Allocation of ethanol to distilleries in Karnataka has increased from 85 crore litres in ESY (Ethanol Supply Year) 2022-23 to 133 crore litres in 2025-26,” he said.Listing out several initiatives of the Centre, the Union Minister said that the Centre had allowed sugar mills to export more periodically to manage surplus sugar in the country, while on the other hand, cane payment was now being paid on time to farmers.Published - November 08, 2025 07:29 pm IST