Honour thy farmer

Sugarcane producers are deep in debt as the government looks away.

In 2015-16, sugarcane farming in Nepal occupied 72,730 hectares of land, according to government statistics. The then cabinet had even directed the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development to declare sugarcane a national crop, a status no crop had received before. The same year, the country produced 3.13 million tonnes of sugarcane, but the annual output has been dropping significantly in the last few years, hurting the national coffers, farmers and consumers.