Sugar, leather and other agro- and animal-based industries

Detail

1. Agro-based and animal-based industries: what they are

• Agro-based industries use raw materials from farms. Examples are sugarcane, cotton, jute, tea, coffee, oilseeds and rubber.
• Agro-processing means turning raw farm produce into finished goods, such as cane into sugar or oilseeds into edible oil (Class 12).
• Main agro-processing industries: food processing, tea, coffee, edible oils and rubber.
• Agri-business is farming run like a factory, on a large scale. Business houses pay for it, and the farms are called "agro-factories". They produce raw material for processing industries.
• Animal-based industries use raw materials taken from animals:
• Leather is made from hides (cattle and buffalo) and skins (goat and sheep).
• Wool is used to make woollen textiles.

2. Sugar industry: India's rank

• Ranking: In the 2021-22 sugar season (October to September), India became the world's largest producer and consumer of sugar. It was also the 2nd largest exporter [2]. (NCERT: second-largest producer after Brazil.) India and Brazil often swap first place from year to year.
• 2021-22 season:
• More than 5,000 LMT (lakh metric tonnes) of sugarcane was grown.
• Mills crushed about 3,574 LMT of cane and made about 394 LMT of sugar [2].

• India exported a record 109.8 LMT of sugar, without any government export subsidy [2].

• A normal year:

• India makes about 300–340 LMT of sugar.
• India uses about 280–290 LMT of sugar at home.

• So there is usually a surplus [3].

• India is first in the world in gur and khandsari:

• Gur (jaggery): solid brown sugar made by boiling cane juice in open pans.
• Khandsari: loose, partly refined crystal sugar made in small units.

3. Why sugar mills sit near cane fields

• Raw-material orientation means a factory is built near its raw material. This happens when the raw material is heavy, bulky or spoils quickly.
• How it works for sugar:
• Cane is bulky. A large weight of cane gives only a little sugar, so carrying it far costs a lot.
• After cutting, cane starts losing sucrose (the sugar in its juice) within hours, so it must be crushed quickly.

• So mills are built inside the cane belt, close to the fields.

• Seasonal work: mills crush only in the cane season. This suits cooperatives, where farmers jointly own the mill and share its profits.

4. Shift from the north to the south

Feature	North belt (UP, Bihar)	South and west belt (Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat)
Share of mills (NCERT)	About 60% of mills were here	Share is growing
Sucrose content of cane	Lower	Higher (tropical climate)
Crushing season	Shorter (cold winter)	Longer (cooler but frost-free climate)
Cooperatives	Weaker	More successful, especially in Maharashtra
Yield per hectare	Lower	Higher

• Result: new mills and the growth in capacity are now mostly in Maharashtra, Karnataka and the south.
• Uttar Pradesh still grows the most cane. It is still a major sugar producer, competing with Maharashtra.

5. By-products: the link between sugar and energy

• Molasses is the thick syrup left after sugar crystals are taken out. It is fermented to make ethanol.
• Ethanol blending means mixing ethanol made from plants into petrol. This cuts crude-oil imports.
• Bagasse is the dry fibre left after crushing cane. Mills burn it for co-generation, which means making steam and electricity at the same time. Mills run on this power and sell the surplus to the grid.
• Diverting sugar to ethanol:
• In 2021-22, 35 LMT of sugar was diverted to make ethanol [2].
• Ethanol gave mills a second source of income. This helped them pay cane farmers on time [3].
• The share of sugar diverted fell from 12% in 2022-23 to about 9% in 2025-26 [3].

• By then, nearly three-fourths of India's ethanol came from grains, mainly maize [3].

• Sustainability problem: cane needs a lot of water. It is grown widely in Marathwada (Maharashtra), a drought-prone rain-shadow area east of the Western Ghats. This drains groundwater and reservoirs.

6. Leather industry: location factors

• Raw material: India has a very large livestock population, which gives a steady supply of hides and skins.
• Labour: tanning and stitching shoes need many workers. Cheap and skilled labour is available.
• Market and exports:
• Exports were US$ 4.83 billion in FY 2024-25 [4].

• The domestic market is worth about US$ 19 billion [4].

• Tanning turns raw hide into lasting leather. Most tanneries use chromium salts (chrome tanning). This is the source of chromium pollution.

7. Leather and footwear clusters

Cluster	State	Feature
Kanpur (Jajmau, on the Ganga)	Uttar Pradesh	346 tanneries in operation at Jajmau [7]. Kanpur Saddlery has a GI tag (Geographical Indication: a legal label for a product from a particular place) [5]
Agra	Uttar Pradesh	Makes about 1.5 lakh pairs of footwear a day. Gives about 28% of India's footwear exports. Agra Leather Footwear has a GI tag [5]
Vellore belt: Ambur, Vaniyambadi, Ranipet	Tamil Nadu (Palar basin)	Tanneries and footwear for export. Chennai, Dindigul and Erode are also centres [4]
Kolkata (Bantala leather complex)	West Bengal	Eastern hub
Others	Maharashtra, Haryana, Punjab, Delhi NCR	Mumbai, Kolhapur, Faridabad, Jalandhar, Noida and New Delhi [4]

• The Kanpur–Agra clusters employ about 1.5 million people. Leather goods are the ODOP (One District One Product: a scheme that promotes one special product from each district) for both districts [5].
• Kanpur, Agra and Ambur are notified as Towns of Export Excellence (TOEE) for leather in the Foreign Trade Policy. Such towns get extra support for export infrastructure [6].

8. Pollution from tanneries

• How the pollution happens:
• Tanning uses chromium salts and other chemicals.
• Waste water full of chromium and salts is let out into drains and rivers.

• This poisons the river water and the groundwater nearby.

• Ganga at Kanpur: the Jajmau tannery cluster has long been a major source of pollution in the Ganga [8].

• Its effluent goes to a 36 MLD (million litres a day) CETP (Common Effluent Treatment Plant: one shared plant that cleans the waste water of many small units) [7].
• That 36 MLD is 9 MLD of tannery waste water and 27 MLD of sewage [7].

• A new 20 MLD CETP for Jajmau, the largest of its type in India, is being built for ₹617 crore under the Namami Gange programme [9].

• Palar river:

• Course: it rises near the Nandi Hills in Karnataka. It flows through Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and enters the Bay of Bengal south of Chennai.

• Problem: waste water from tanneries in the Vellore belt (Ambur, Vaniyambadi, Ranipet) has polluted the river and its groundwater.

• Kolkata: tanneries were moved out of the city to the Bantala leather complex in east Kolkata, which has a shared treatment plant.

Prelims Hooks

• In sugar season 2021-22, India was the world's largest producer and consumer of sugar and the 2nd largest exporter [2]. (NCERT ranks India second, after Brazil.)
• India ranks first in gur and khandsari production.
• The Indian sugar season runs from October to September [2].
• Sugar mills are raw-material oriented, because cane is bulky and loses sucrose after it is cut.
• The industry is shifting south because southern cane has higher sucrose, the crushing season is longer and cooperatives work better.
• Molasses is used to make ethanol; bagasse is used for co-generation of power.
• By 2025-26, about three-fourths of India's ethanol came from grains (mainly maize), not cane [3].
• Leather cluster–state pairs: Jajmau (Kanpur) – UP; Ambur, Vaniyambadi, Ranipet – Tamil Nadu; Bantala – West Bengal.
• Agra gives about 28% of India's footwear exports. Kanpur Saddlery and Agra Leather Footwear have GI tags [5].
• Kanpur, Agra and Ambur are notified Towns of Export Excellence for leather [6].

Mains Points

• Location shift (GS-I):
• The sugar industry is moving from UP and Bihar to Maharashtra, Karnataka and the south.
• Better cane, a longer crushing season and strong cooperatives explain the move.

• Because the industry is raw-material oriented, mills stay tied to cane-growing areas.

• Sugar–energy link (GS-III):

• Diverting sugar to ethanol and using bagasse for co-generation makes mills stronger and clears cane dues [2][3].
• Cane's heavy water use in drought-prone Marathwada is a problem.

• The move to grain-based ethanol [3] shows that the feedstock base is spreading beyond cane.

• Leather and the environment (GS-III):

• Leather clusters create many jobs and earn export income [4][5].
• But chrome tanning pollutes the Ganga at Kanpur and the Palar in Tamil Nadu.

• The responses are shared treatment plants (CETPs), Namami Gange projects [7][9], NGT and CPCB orders, and moving tanneries to planned complexes like Bantala.

• Agro-processing and rural growth:

• Food processing, edible oils, tea, coffee and rubber add value to farm produce close to the farms.
• This cuts waste after harvest and gives rural people non-farm jobs.