Lucknow, Oct. 30 -- Ahead of the upcoming crushing season, the Yogi Adityanath government has announced a hike in the sugarcane price, known as the State Advisory Price (SAP), bringing significant relief to farmers across Uttar Pradesh. "The state government has increased the sugarcane price by Rs 30 per quintal for the 2025-26 crushing season. With this revision, the price of the early variety of sugarcane has been fixed at Rs 400 per quintal, while the price of the common variety will now be Rs 390 per quintal," sugarcane development minister Laxmi Narain Chaudhary said on Wednesday. The increase in sugarcane prices will result in an additional payment of around Rs 3,000 crore to the state's 46 lakh farmers who supply cane to sugar mills, according to the minister. He said since coming to power in 2017, the Yogi Adityanah government has enhanced the sugarcane price by 85 per quintal - Rs 10 per quintal in 2017-18, Rs 25 per quintal in 2021-22, Rs 20 per quintal in 2023-24 and Rs 30 this year. Terming the hike as historic, he noted the sugarcane price in Maharashtra and Karnataka, the two other major sugarcane-growing states, was still only Rs 355 per quintal each. The minister said that in the past eight-and-a-half years, sugarcane farmers in Uttar Pradesh had received record payments totaling Rs 2,90,225 crore - nearly double the Rs 1,47,346 crore paid during the previous decade (2007-2017). "This means farmers have received Rs 1,42,879 crore more under the present government," he added. He claimed that it was because of remunerative SAP and timely payments to farmers that the area under sugarcane cultivation had increased from 20 lakh hectares to 29.51 hectares, putting UP on the top in the country. "Currently, 122 sugar mills are operational in UP, the second highest after Maharashtra," he added. Rashtriya Lok Dal chief and minister in the Modi government Jayant Chaudhary has welcomed the hike. "The Uttar Pradesh government has honoured the sweetness of sugarcane and the hard work of farmers...," he said in a post on X....