Manufacturing Industries — Part 2: Sugar, cotton textiles and silk: visual lesson, ICSE Class 10 Geography (H.C.G. Paper 2)

Lesson

Industries that begin on the farm

Part 2 — three great agro-based industries: sugar, which must be close to its cane; cotton textiles, among the oldest modern industries of India; and silk, a craft and an industry that keeps millions of rural families busy.

In this lesson you will

Explain why sugar mills are located close to sugarcane fields and why the industry has shifted to peninsular India
Explain the factors that favoured the cotton textile industry in Mumbai and Ahmedabad
Name the types of silk and the major silk centres, and explain why Karnataka leads in mulberry silk

Table of three agro-based industries with their raw material and leading regions
Industry	Raw material	Leading region (early 2020s)
Sugar	Sugarcane	Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka
Cotton textiles	Raw cotton	Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu
Silk	Silk cocoons	Karnataka (mulberry), Assam, Jharkhand

Concept

Sugar: why mills stand among the cane fields

Sugarcane is heavy and bulky — only about a tenth of its weight becomes sugar — so carrying it far is costly. It is also perishable: once cut, its sucrose content starts falling, so it must be crushed within about a day. It cannot be stored. So sugar mills are built in the cane-growing belt, and farmers bring cane by tractor or bullock cart within a short radius. Mills also need water, cheap labour in the crushing season, and transport for the finished sugar.

Diagram

Delay costs sugar (illustrative)

The illustrative graph shows sugar recovered from cane falling as crushing is delayed: 0 h — 11%; 24 h — 10.5%; 48 h — 9.8%; 72 h — 9%. A mill that keeps cane waiting loses sugar every hour, which is why mills schedule cutting and crushing together and buy cane only from nearby fields.

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