Modelling and forecasting sugarcane and sugar production in India

This paper attempts forecasting the sugarcane area, production and productivity and sugar production of India and as well as major sugarcane growing states of India through fitting of univariate Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models. The data on sugarcane area, production and productivity and sugar production collected from 1950?2012 has been used for present study. For Uttar Pradesh, ARIMA(2, 1, 2) model is found best for area and Uttar Pradesh would grow sugarcane in an area of 2397.53 thousand in 2020. In case of Tamil Nadu productivity, ARIMA (2, 1, 2) is found appropriate and same would be 104.25 tons per hectare in 2020. ARIMA (3, 1, 3) model for sugarcane area; ARIMA(2, 1, 1) model is found appropriate for sugarcane production, productivity and sugar production in India. The performances of models are validated by comparing with actual values. Using the models developed, forecast values for sugarcane area, production, productivity and sugar production are worked out for subsequent years. These projections will help in making good policies with respect to the production scenario the country.