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What workedA sugarcane-juice seller in Rangamati, in a Prothom Alo report · Started in 2017

Paddy out, sugarcane in: four lakh taka a year from a roadside juice shop

The same 2.5 acres returned about 30,000 taka a year under paddy against 18,000 taka of production cost. Crushed and sold as juice at the roadside, the cane from that land now takes about 2,000 taka a day and leaves about 400,000 taka of profit over a nine-month season.

This 65-year-old woman from Khamparpara in Sapchhari union, Rangamati Sadar, switched about 2.5 acres of her land from paddy to sugarcane in 2017. Under paddy the land brought about 30,000 taka a year with 18,000 taka of that going on production costs, leaving very little in hand. Rather than sell the cane off the field she opened a small shop on the Rangamati-Khagrachhari road and crushes and sells the juice herself: the shop runs about nine months of the year, takes about 2,000 taka a day and leaves roughly 400,000 taka of profit over those nine months. A pump and juice-making equipment came through the Sugarcane Research Centre under the Chittagong Hill Tracts Development Board, and the family puts the crop value from the same land at about six lakh taka now. What the shop cost to set up is not stated in the report.

Lessons

  1. 1.Processing your own crop and selling it yourself captures the retail margin: the same cane earned several times more by the glass than by the field
  2. 2.A seasonal shop has to be budgeted on the nine months it actually opens, not on twelve

Published with the person's permission, without revealing who they are.

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