Sindh farmers give government 10 days to fix sugarcane price at Rs650 and start crushing, warning of Islamabad march
The Sindh Abadgar Ittehad and Kisan Ittehad have demanded Rs650 per maund for sugarcane and Rs4,500 for wheat, warning they will march to Islamabad if crushing does not begin within 10 days.
Farmers in Sindh have given the government 10 days to announce official support prices for sugarcane and wheat and to order sugar mills to start crushing, warning that they will march on Islamabad if their demands are not met.
The ultimatum was issued by the Sindh Abadgar Ittehad and the Kisan Ittehad at a joint press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Wednesday. The two organisations are demanding a sugarcane support price of Rs650 per maund, with a maund equal to 40 kilograms, and a wheat support price of Rs4,500 per maund. They said the crushing season should already have begun, and that growers had been left with no official price and no start date for the mills.
Kisan Ittehad President Khalid Hussain Batth told reporters that the government had issued no notification fixing the sugarcane price and had announced no date for crushing to begin, leaving growers uncertain about when, and at what price, they would be able to sell their crop. Sindh Abadgar Ittehad President Nawab Zubair Talpur said the crushing season should have started on 1 November, but that mills had still not begun operations.
Batth pointed to the contrast across the border, saying 107 sugar mills in India had been crushing cane since 1 October. The comparison, reported by Dunya News, underlined the farmers' argument that the delay in Pakistan is a matter of decision rather than of the season itself, and that every week of waiting costs growers money while their harvested cane stands in the fields.
Talpur accused sugar mill owners of repeating the same pattern at the start of every crushing season, holding back operations to deny growers a fair return. The leaders also raised the wider pressures on farming families, including unpaid dues from earlier seasons, water shortages, and the rising cost of fertiliser and diesel, all of which have squeezed margins before the new season has even begun.
The two organisations have set up a joint protest camp outside the Karachi Press Club, where growers have continued their demonstration. Their leaders said they would announce their next course of action on Thursday evening, including plans for a large gathering near the Sindh-Punjab border and a decision on whether to launch a march towards Islamabad if the government fails to accept their demands within the 10 days.
The dispute follows a familiar pattern in Pakistan's sugar sector, where the price of cane and the timing of crushing are contested almost every year. Sugarcane is one of the country's main cash crops, grown widely across Sindh and Punjab, and the support price is the floor on which millions of small growers depend. When mills delay crushing, growers cannot sell, cane loses weight and quality in the fields, and the eventual price becomes a negotiation conducted from a position of weakness.
Earlier in the week, the Sindh Abadgar Ittehad had separately pressed for a higher wheat price of Rs5,000 per maund and raised concern that paddy was selling for as little as Rs2,600 per maund in upper Sindh. The joint ultimatum has settled on Rs4,500 for wheat, but the message is the same: growers want the prices fixed and announced before sowing and harvesting decisions are locked in, rather than after the season has begun.
No official response to the ultimatum had been reported in the coverage of the press conference, and the government has not publicly set out a date for the crushing season or a sugarcane price. That silence is part of the farmers' complaint. Their demand is not only for a number, but for a notification and an order to the mills to start work, so that the season can proceed on a timetable growers can plan around.
What happens next will become clearer on Thursday evening, when the two organisations announce their plan, and over the following 10 days, as the deadline runs down. If the government announces the prices and orders crushing to begin, the protest is likely to stand down. If it does not, the farmers have said they will take their case to Islamabad, turning a provincial pricing dispute into a national confrontation at the start of the crushing season.
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