With the crushing season on the line and North Karnataka's sugarcane belt bracing for another difficult year, Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar has fired off a formal letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanding urgent Central action on five fronts that farmers and mills say will make or break the 2026-27 season.

The Five Demands on Modi's Desk

At the heart of Shivakumar's letter is the sugar Minimum Selling Price, frozen at ₹31 per kg since 2019 — a figure the Karnataka government argues is deeply out of step with the rising cost of growing cane. The CM has asked the Union Government to revise it upward without delay. Alongside that, the letter calls for a structural split: separate MSPs for domestic sugar and commercial sugar, so household consumers are not squeezed while bulk buyers pay a price that reflects real market conditions.

The third and fourth demands target the Ethanol Blending Programme, the national initiative that turned sugarcane juice, sugar syrup and B-heavy molasses into a revenue lifeline for mills — and, by extension, for farmers. Karnataka wants the Centre to review procurement exclusions that have left certain ethanol streams unfairly sidelined, and to raise cane-based ethanol prices in line with rising input costs. Together, the two asks reflect a broader anxiety: that the blending programme's promise is being diluted just as mills need it most.

The fifth demand is perhaps the most technically significant. The letter calls for restoring the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) base recovery rate to 9.50% — the historic benchmark that determines how much mills must pay farmers per tonne of cane. In low-recovery regions, a depressed base rate can legally allow mills to pay less, hitting farmers in precisely the zones, like parts of North Karnataka, where yields are already under pressure.

What Karnataka Has Already Done — and Why It Is Not Enough

Shivakumar's office was careful to note that the state has not been a passive bystander. The Karnataka government says it has moved to tighten weighment transparency, strengthen sugar recovery testing at mills, and extend additional financial support to farmers — all within the limits of state authority. The implicit message is pointed: the state has done its part; the Centre must now do its own.

That framing reflects a familiar pattern in Indian sugar politics. States set the pace of the crushing calendar and police mill conduct, but the big pricing levers — MSP, FRP, ethanol procurement prices — sit firmly with New Delhi. When those levers stay stuck, even a well-run state programme cannot fully protect farmer incomes.

North Karnataka's Crushing Season and the Ticking Clock

The timing of the letter is not incidental. The crushing season in North Karnataka — a major sugarcane belt — is poised to begin, and delays have repeatedly eaten into farmer revenues in past years. If Central pricing signals do not arrive before mills start operations, the entire season's economics get locked in at rates farmers and the state government consider unfair.

The Union Food Ministry's response — whether a revision to sugar MSP, a fresh look at ethanol procurement rules, or a Cabinet-level FRP review — will set the terms for hundreds of thousands of cane growers across the state. With the season opening imminent, the clock is running.