AN ECONOMIC INSIGHT INTO THE PRODUCTION OF SWEET SORGHUM AND ETHANOL IN WESTERN TAMIL NADU

The study is an attempt to identify the economic feasibility of production of sweet sorghum and ethanol. The buy backmechanism is prevalent between Messrs Bannari Amman Sugars Limited and the farmers of Sathyamangalam Taluk. The study has identified the land use pattern in vogue with thefarmers revealed that as the size of holding increases, the area allocatedfor sweet sorghunt is also increqses. The cost s'lnrcture in respect of A1, B and C involved in establtshrnent of st'veel sorghtm are also discussed. Amongt,at'ious cost componenls, human labor, fertiLtzers and munure consumed to a level of around 60 per cent. The cost of prodtrction of ethanol from stveet sorghum is little higherthantheone clrawnfrontntolasses. ls ageoJlhesweetsorghttmadvances, lhejuice weight obtainedfrom a ton of stalk is decreasing. Hence, optimtLnt age of harvesting is very tmporlanl' The optimum age of harvesting of su,eet sorghtmt for higher t,olurne of ethanol produclion and highcr yield rs/ stalk are also discussed.

Sekhar et a/i yields generally increase as the stalk matures to the ripe seed stage.To obtain high-quality symp and high yields, it should be harvested when the seed is in the soft dough stage.

Sweet sorghum in India
The sugar industry in India is the second largestprocessing industry nextto cottontextiles.More than 350 factories have been established in India with an installed capacity of about 20 million tonnes of sugar and 60-g0 million tonnes of molasses as a by product.Sugarcane is used as raw material for sweetening agents in Indi'a like sugar (,,gur (50-60%) and khand sari (6-7o/").Molasses, a by-product from sugar industries is utilized for production of alcohol, acetic acid, citric acid etc.
As water availability in sugarcane cultivated areas has become amajor constraint, sweet sorghum canbe an effective alternative that could supplement sugarcane in ethanol production.Sweet sorghum is rich in stalk sucrose and sugars which resembles closely sugarcane for its juicy stalk.It provides glain and stent that can be used for the production of sugar, alcohol, s1mrp, j aggery feed and fodder.However, its stalks have a greater potential to be used as a raw material for fuel grade ethanol production.( Dayakar Rao, el   al, 2004).Sweet sorghum was introduced into India by NARI in late 1960s.As the Arnerican varieties producedvery little grain of inferior quality, theywerc crossed atNARI with local graintypes.This incleased their adaptability to local geographic and climatic conditions.Due to econotnic considelal'tons, emphasis was given to high grain and biomass as well as sugar yields in developing new sorghum varieties.lnstead of pure lines, NARI opted for hybrid production in order to speedil;z combine high grain, biomass, arrd sugat produition ability into one cultivar.The sweet-stem sorghum hybrid "Madhura" has been developed at NAzu for ethanol, synrp and jaggery (unrefined sugar) production' Ethanol is a renewable source of energy which can be produccd from feed sl"ocks such as molasses, cottt, sweet sorghum etc.The Govemment of India starled an initiative to make it mandatory to add 5% ethanol to gasoline, resulting in increased demand for Madhura seed.About 70 per cent of Indian crude oil requirements are met through imports, which is draining cur exchequer.Therefore, ethauol blending with petrol is expected to save foreign exchange worth of Rs B30 crores per ycar besides genelating jobs, and controlling carbon dioxide emissions' India consumes about 7g lakh kilolitres of petrol annually and the ethanol requirement for blending is estimated to be 3.9 lakh kilolitres, which provides an immense scope tbr the agricultural sector.But the existing level of ethanol procluction fiom sugarcane molasses is only 2.0 kilolitres.The installed capacityof Indian ethanol industry during 200r-o2was 3.2 billion litres per annum but it was undcr utilized (41 pu cent) and produccd to the tune of 1 .3 billion litres.'l'hus the underutilizcd capacity can lre best utilized by using altemate feedstocks such as sweet sorghum as supplementary raw material' Tamil Nadu Scenario Pursuant to the decision of the Government of India to introduce Ethanol doped petrol for use as fuel in Tamil Nadu' the State Government have issued orders accepting in principle the manufactue ofAnhydrous Alcohol (Ethanol) by the distilleries in the State.
In Tamil Nadu, I 5 Distilleries are manufacturing alcohol.Among the I 5 Distilleries, 1 3 are in the private Sector and 2 are in the Co-operative Sector.BarurariAmman sugars Ltd is one ofthe leading distilleries, is being cultivated sweet sorghum by entering contractual anangement with the farmers of Erode district as a pilot project.As water availabr"lity in many irrigated areas of Erode has become a major constraint, sweet sorghum can be effective altemative for sugarcane in ethanol production.
Keeping this in view, an attempt is made in the present study 1) to estimate the optimum age ofharvesting, cost ofproduction and retums of sweet sorghum; 2) To examine the economic feasibility of ethanol production from sweet sorghum; and 3) To suggest appropriate policy measures, for expansion of area under sweet sorghum in Tamil Nadu.

METHODOLOGY
Sweet sorghum is cultivated in Erode district and this district was chosen purposively.Among the taluks, Sathyamangalam taluk ofErode district was selected in the first stage as it had maximum number offarmers cultivating Sweet sorghum' In this taluk, the village wise list of sweet sorghum growers were obtained from the records of Bannari Amman Sugars Ltd, who are the promoters of the crop in the district.From the list, five villages ryere selected based on higher area in cultivation of sweet sorghum in the second stage.The rankingvillages (Figure -1) were Varadhampalayam,Akkarainegamam, Thandampalayam,Alathukombai, and Uthandiyur.From the list 10 Sweet sorghum growing farmers were selected at random from each village inthe third stage to cover 50 samples from five villages following three stage random sampling technique' Personal interview method was adopted using structured questionnaire designed for the purposc to collectthe rbquired data from 50 sample farmers.
To analyse the costs and retums, the concept adopted by Directorate of Economics and Statistics (DES), NewDelhiwas adopted viz., costA, cost B, cost c. (DES, Govemment of India, 1970-71).
CostA: krcludes seeds, hired human labour, machine labour, inorganic fertilizers.Organic manures, insecticide, land revcnue, depreciation on farm implements and machineries and interest on working capital.
CostB:lncludes costAplus rental value of owned land and interest on fixcd cppital.
Cost C: Includes cost B plus imputed value of family labour.To highlight the tunrover for the investment on various resources, Output-Input Ratio was employed.Here, Output refers to the gross retum obtained from main and by product of sweet sorghum and the lnput here refers to the total cost which is described as Cost 'C'.
Besides this, the optimum age of harvesting is very important to produce quality syrup.For that purpose, the data generated from the experiments conducted by I\zlS Bannari Amman Sugars Limited was utilized.
The tables generated for the study involves both primary and secondary data which are analyzed using percentage analysis for drawing inferences.The land use pattern, which are in vogue with the sample farms who are cultivating sweet sorghum are fumished in Table 1.It revealed that among the 50 sample farms, 64 per cent of the sample farms are in large farm category followpdby 20 per cent in medium category.[n toto, it revealed that as size ofholding increases, the area allocated for sweet sorghum is also increasing in actual terms.Whereas, in percentage terms, it is not so.Because, the large farms are allocating higher land area exclusively for sugarcane, turmeric, muze and ginger.But the area allocated under sweet sorghum is twice that ofmedium category and five times higher when compared to small farm category.Small and medium farmers are allocating to an extent of 46.46 per cent and 62.83 per cent to their respective size of holding.From this one could infer that as size ofholding increases, the farmers are showing more interest on allocating theirlandforcultivationofsweet sorghumdueto the presence ofBuyBackMcchanism, whichare discussed under tlre tifle offactors influencing cultivation of sweet sorghum.To know the influence ofage and educational $atus on cultivation of sweet sorghum, the details are processed and furnished in It revealed that the heads of medium and large farm category are in the middle age group and they posses the educational status of higher secondary and above which are accounted to be 70 per cent to the total respondents.Whereas, large farm heads are in possession of higher secondary and above are accounted to be 81 per cent to the total farms.The heads of small farms are in the age group of 65 and around 87 per cent of them had education up to higher secondary level.The educational background coupled with thcir age and experience in fanning had motivated them to go in for allocation of land under sweet sorghum to an cxtent of46 per cent oftheir total holding.
From this, one could infer that, the knowledge background and the activalion of middle age forced them to choose newer technologies like sweet sorghum to eam profit by allocating considerable area for sweet sorghum.I Water R.equirement for Principal Crops Analyzing the information of the water requirement for different crops arc drawn from secondary source arrd are presented here to highlight the extent of water use by the principal crops.Table 3 revealed thal the interval between two irrigalion was found to be 15 days and require around 8 irrigation for harvesting of Sweet Sorghum.
Thc water requirement for Sweet Sorghum was found to be 400 mm.The crops like Sorghum, Ragi is in 1he same category of consuming 400 mrn of water for getting robust yield.The comparison of watet requirernent of dry land crops like Sweet Sorghum with that of Paddy and Sugarcane revealed that Paddy ald Sugarcane hatl respectively consumed 3 times and five times higher amount of water than the Sweet Scrgnurn.Among the dry land crops, Gingelly, Black grams were the crops require very less quantum of watel, rrynieh was found to be 250 mm.These were reflected in the yield of crops' On summing up, Sweet  The Bannari Alnman Sugars Limited has conducted a trial crushing of sweet sorghum to examine the optimum age ofharvesting and the economic feasibility of ethanol production.The details are fumished in Table 4.In respect of production of alcohol alone, the optimum age of harvesting is anived at 108 days afterplanting.Here, the yield of alcohol is worked out to be 4l.82litresperton of stalk of sweet mghum.
Aninteresting finding drawn from the table 4 are, as age of the crop increases, the weight ofthe stalk also increases up to the age of II7 days.There after, a decrease could be observed in the weight of stalks due drying of stalks because of aging.That decrease in stalk weight could be observed during 117 days to Co$BisheredescribedasCostAlplusimputedvalueoffamilylabor,whichisa:rived at24472,which is accounted for 95 per cent of the total cost.Cost C is the total cost, described here as Cost B plus imputed value of family labor and the total cost is arrived atRs.2572l(100 per cent).
With regard to the yield of the main product (stalk), it is arrived at22.45 tonnes per ha and the yield of grains (by product) accounted to be 3 .7 1 tonnes per ha.Based on the tie up entered with the Bannari Amman Sugars Limited, the stalks were taken by them for production of Ethanol.The gross return is anived at 5 1025 per ha and the Outputlnput Ratio worked out to be 1 .98revealed that, for the investrnent of cvery rupee in sweet sorghum, it earns a gross income of Rs. 1.98 with a net retum of 9g paise.It is a considerable return and hence the aspirants can come forward to raise the crop to eam higher income by managrng their dry land s available with them. AGRIEAST2OO9 Sekhar ef a// Cost of Production of Ethanol Ethanol is a renewable source of energy, which can be produced from sweet sorghum and molasses.Since sweet sorghum is mostly used for extraction of ethanol, the cost of production of ethanol (per litre) was arrived at and compared with the one drawn from the molasses to know the cost effectiveness.
Cost of production per litre of ethanol from sweet sorghum is Rs. 13.11 and the same from molasses is arrived a] Rs. 10.90.The dif,ference in cost is mainly due to the involvement of cost on rawmaterial procrrement, which is accountedfor 79.41per cent in respect of sweet sorghum and 73.85 per cent in respect of molasses.The higher percentage in raw material is mainly due to the presence of buy back mechanism in vogue with the farmers and the industry.Here, sweet sorghum is the main product whereas; molasses is a by-product of sugarcane, which consumes lesser cost.The ethanol from sweet sorghum seems to be advantageous on the lines of no cost for pollution control measures.Hence, considering the demand for ethanol large-scale cultivation of sweet sorghum may be practiced to meet the deficiency in Bio-diesel production.

Figure
Figure 1: Map Showing the Study area Palanisamy.K. water Technology centre, TNAU, coimbatore -3) 0ptimumAge of Harvesting and Crushing

Table 1 .
Size of Holding among the Sample Farms Category of Number Size of Area under Area under Farms (in Ha) of Farms holding Sweet Sorghum other crops Small(0.4r -l.0l) Medium (1.02-2.02)Large (> 2.02) (Figures in parentheses indicate percentagc to total)

Table 2 .Table 2 .
Age and Educational Qualifications of Sample Heads Category Age of Head No. of of Farms of sample Farms (Figures in parentheses indicate perccntage to total)

Table 3 .
Details of Water Requirement for Different Crops in Tamil Nadu

Table 4 .
Details of Trial Crushing of Sweet Sorghum

Table - 4
revealed that the optimum age of harvesting of sweet sorghum in respect of yield of stalk alone is anived at I 17 days.

Table 5 .
Cost and Returns from Sweet Sorghum (N:50)

Table 6 .
Cost of Production of Ethanol from Sugarcane and Sweet-Sorghum in India(2003- Source :Annual Report2003-2004Govt. oflndia.(c0I) (Figures in parentheses indicate percentage to total)