When Uttar Pradesh declared 47 of its districts as drought-hit, sugar mill owners of the state were left feeling bitter. Large parts of the cane belt are located in these districts that saw many sugar mills come up over the past several years. Already reeling under a low cane production for the last two years, the mill owners are bracing up for an acute shortage of cane this year as well. For them, this would mean another, and worse, season of less than optimum utilisation of the crushing capacity of their mills. The crushing season commences October. A majority of the mills had closed down within 100 days last year as against the usual four to six months of operations. Most of the mills in private sector with installed capacity ranging from 5,000 TCD (tonnes crushed daily) to 12,000 TCD could not be utilised to their maximum capacity. While traditional cane abundant areas like Meerut, Saharanpur, Shahjahanpur, Rampur, Bareilly, Ghaziabad have officially been declared drought-hit, the situation in other important cane districts like Muzzafarnagar, Lakhimpur Kheri, Bahraich is not very encouraging either. Diversion of the crop into production of gur (jaggery) and khandsari units in UP, too, is set to add to the huge shortfall of sugar threatening the state. Even before the crushing season has begun, the gur and khandsari units have offered to pay Rs 170 per quintal to sugarcane growers. In 2008-09, the UP government had fixed the State Advisory Price (SAP) of sugarcane at Rs 145 per quintal for the common variety and Rs 150 per quintal for the early variety. The khandsari units, on the other hand, paid Rs 160 per quintal to farmers last season. The production is set to be hit further as there has also been a decline in acreage