UPL, Shreenath Mhaskoba Sugar Mill inks MoU for sustainable sugarcane production

This is part of the shift in the company’s business model to sustainable agriculture

Agrochemical major, UPL signed an MoU with Shreenath Mhaskoba Sugar Mill in Pune for a sustainable sugarcane production programme and reach 4,000 farmers in 70 villages. Globally, biosolutions is Rs 4,000 crore business and in India, this is Rs 400 crore business. This is part of the shift in the company’s business model to sustainable agriculture. The company has plans to launch 30 new products in the next 24 months.

As part of these initiatives, UPL announced the commercial launch of their patented Zeba Technology for sugarcane farmers. According to Shroff the Zeba Technology would lead to a 20 per cent savings in water and reduce the use of fertilisers which would reduce the overall costs for the farmer and improve their production and income. The sugarcane crop requires the major consumption of resources like water, inputs, electricity, labor, and fuel. Despite high consumption, the return on investment to each stakeholder is low with a poor yield.

The company had been working on several pilots with farmers and they had seen savings of 600 crore litre of water and 500 MT urea of fertilisers while increasing yield by 15 per cent over 10,000 acres of land through optimum utilisation of natural resources and use of the Zeba Technolgy.

Company has mentioned that it is in process of talking to five to six sugar mills and hoped to add them to the programme in the next 30 days. The target was to scale up and reach a million acres in two to three year.

This is part of the shift in