Cane and gifted: Can sugar find a greener future, asks Mridula Ramesh

India is the homeland of cultivated sugarcane. “Iksu” is the Sanskrit word for sugarcane, and it is said that Rama and the Ikshvaku clan may have derived their wealth and name from sugarcane.

It is mentioned in the Vedas and early Buddhist and Tamil literature. The latter poetically depicts the sugarcane as the bow of Kama (Kama is the Hindu god of love). Arthashastra is full of references to large-scale cultivation of this crop. Focusing on balance, Ayurveda talks about different sugars and their uses. This raises the question: Are we balanced for sugar in our foods, on our farms, and in our nation’s climate plan?

Food

In a popular Huberman Lab podcast, Chilean geneticist and neurobiologist Charles Zuker discusses an experiment in which mice lacking taste receptors initially responded with equal indifference to both regular and sugar water. But after 48 hours, the mice preferred the sugar water, even though they couldn’t taste it.

Scientists believe this is because the mice developed a craving for the substance. This is because sugar activates the mesolimbic dopamine system (MDS), an ancient but evil pathway in the brain that rewards us for actions that help us survive.

Sugars are an effective source of calories, so when we eat them, our brains flood with dopamine, telling us we did a good job. However, to get the same pleasure next time, we need to consume more sugar, which puts us on the path of sugar addiction.

For decades, Sugar’s image has become a yo-yo. Today, obesity is considered Diet Enemy #1, linked to metabolic dysfunction and Type 2 diabetes. Diabetes is a chronic disease and one of the top ten causes of death worldwide. South Asians are particularly vulnerable. The International Diabetes Federation estimates that there are 77 million adult diabetics and 25 million prediabetics in India alone in 2021.

I have relatives who have had diabetes for decades and whose health depends on daily monitoring and management. Unfortunately, almost half of Indian diabetics are unaware of their disease, leaving them more vulnerable to major health problems.

The prevalence of Type 2 diabetes in India increased from 2.1% in the early 1970s to 6.7% in 1990 and 8.7% in 2016. More than 13% of adults in diabetes hotspot Tamil Nadu suffer from the disease. Being overweight is the most important risk factor for diabetes, followed by diet, according to a 2021 study published in The Lancet.

So how has our diet changed?

From 1990 to 2016, official figures reveal that we consume fewer grains (both cereals and legumes) and much more cooking oil, eggs, milk and sugar. Moreover, the average Indian household spends much more money on processed food and sugary drinks today than it did in 1990. This follows studies published in journals such as The Lancet and Nature, which show that not eating enough whole grains mirrors diet-disease patterns. Consuming too many refined grains, red meat, processed meat, and too many sugary drinks is associated with a higher risk of disease.

Maybe excess calories are at the root of the problem, and sugary drinks and other bare carbohydrates (those without fiber to keep us full) make it easy for us to consume more calories than we need?

“While the development of diabetes is a multifactorial process, there is no escaping the fact that carbohydrate load plays a large role, and sugar within carbohydrates – both overt and covert – plays an important role,” says the Cambridge-trained endocrinologist. diabetes specialist Dr Anand Kumar. Labeling foods to inform customers about hidden sources of sugar and other ingredients can be helpful.

But there seems to be more to this story.

One study found that Indians living in Chennai had a much higher prevalence of diabetes than South Asians living in San Francisco and Chicago. Having lived in all three regions, I wonder if diet, exercise, and environmental factors (like inflammation caused by dioxins from burning garbage) play a role in this as well.

If so, focusing solely on sugar will not solve the problem.

farms

In the context of farms, let’s ask: Is sugar the villain of water?

The Agricultural Costs and Prices Commission found that sugarcane cultivation, which occupies less than 4% of Maharashtra’s cultivated area, uses nearly 70% of irrigation water. This situation causes serious water inequality in the state. Can we change this? How?

The sugar farmer and the sugar industry depend on both cane yield (cane per acre) and recovery (sugar per tonne of cane), which are in turn affected by temperature and soil moisture. The crop thrives in hot and humid conditions and is well adapted to India’s climate. But unfortunately the climate is changing.

“When the temperature exceeds 40 degrees Celsius, we need to give the plant enough water, otherwise it will dry out and the result will be very bad,” says Shanmuga Sundaram, head of R&D at EID Parry, one of India’s largest sugar producers.

The plant can cool itself with more water up to a point, but above 42 degrees Celsius, productivity decreases even with extra water. Such temperatures are becoming more common, especially during El Niño years, and especially in the dry parts of the Indian subcontinent. And so in 2023-24, an El Niño year, India’s sugar production fell sharply.

Meanwhile, sugar cane also affects the climate. Brazil, the 800-pound sugar gorilla, is the plant’s adopted home. Cultivators began clearing the rainforest here to produce cash crops in the 16th century. Other products followed. By 2000, Brazil had lost forest cover in the Amazon the size of France. This has global climate consequences.

Closer to home, in India, flooded sugarcane fields emit methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Studies have shown that methane emissions from rice fields are reduced by approximately 80% when switching from flood irrigation to drip irrigation. Could the same situation be true for sugar cane? We’ll have to test and see.

Fertilizer use increases carbon emissions and also pollutes water. Burning post-harvest residue increases the carbon footprint of the crop. Sugar factories produce our sugar, which requires energy, by breaking the canes repeatedly and boiling the water. When this energy is produced by burning sugarcane waste or bagasse, this makes the process carbon neutral. It would also be beneficial for the mill to recycle its wastewater.

We can make sugarcane greener by using less chemical fertilizers, mulching (instead of burning the waste) and crushing sugarcane only once (as in the production of more nutritious jaggery). (Jaggery uses half the electricity while producing almost twice as much bagasse as sugar.)

“But going natural reduces yields, so this needs to be encouraged for farmers to bite,” says Muthiah Murugappan, CEO of EID Parry.

Perhaps if fertilizer were not so heavily subsidized and water and carbon were not valued more, farmers would automatically be manipulated in this way and, with a little luck, sugarcane farming would be more sustainable.

To tip the balance, EID Parry has launched Cultyvate, a precision agricultural water initiative, to help reduce water consumption. Farmers were hesitant to pay for the necessary technology; They didn’t see the need. The water they would save came to them free of charge.

Finally, EID Parry funded a pilot program focused on climate change resilience. A year later, data revealed that if a field were flooded, 240,000 liters of water per acre were needed, but when drip irrigation was used instead, this figure dropped to 35,000 liters per acre.

Because irrigation required so much water (like using a chainsaw on a pastry), it could be repeated fewer times a season than drip irrigation. This meant that there were times when the plant needed moisture but was not getting it. Taking its solution one step further, Cultyvate’s technology activates drip irrigation only when sensors indicate the plant needs moisture.

Over the course of one season, the Cultyvate method used 80% less water than flood irrigation and 35% less water than regular drip irrigation. What was really impressive was the yield: 30% higher than flood irrigation and 18% higher than regular drip irrigation. This was because the plant got what it needed, when it needed it.

This will be difficult to scale due to upfront costs. A system of carbon credits from methane savings or a sustainability premium on sugar from such fields could help scale such efforts and build water resilience.

Country and climate

Most sugarcane fields in India are irrigated by floodwater. Careful control of water use can increase sugarcane production while reducing water use across India.

“If by scaling up these sustainable irrigation practices we can increase national production by seven to 10 million tonnes within a reasonable period of time, say within five years, then you’re talking. You have enough fuel for your biofuel dreams,” says Murugappan.

This is golden in these geopolitically exciting times when energy self-sufficiency is critical.

Today, there has been an explosion of political and corporate interest in electric vehicles and biofuels. Countries are cautious about the critical mineral content of electric vehicles; This concern increased after China restricted shipments of gallium and germanium. This has increased the appeal of biofuels, which reduce fuel imports, reward farmers and are considered more environmentally friendly. What a bargain!

Unsurprisingly, countries are prioritizing biofuels in their Nationally Determined Contributions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a way to show green street cred. Brazil and India, the world’s largest sugar producers, require increasing levels of bioethanol to be blended into their oil. This will only be greener if we can reduce the solubility of bioethanol.

The sustainability bonus will help balance sugar’s relationship with nutrition, climate, water and the farmer. But don’t hold your breath as the elections approach.

(Mridula Ramesh is a climate technology investor and author of The Climate Solution and Watershed. She can be reached at [email protected])