India’s ethanol blending programme, which reached a 20 per cent blend in 2025-26, rests partly on grain feedstock, and the government’s own briefing lists sugarcane, maize and surplus rice as the crops that higher blends draw on. The ICAR-IIMR sugarcane maize intercropping model speaks directly to the maize side of that feedstock question. It uses the fact that sugarcane grows slowly for its first three months and takes 10 to 15 months to mature, while sugar mills and distilleries run for only part of the year. A short-duration maize hybrid, maturing in 90 to 120 days, is sown between the sugarcane rows in that early window, using nearly the same land, water, fertiliser and crop protection.

On-farm demonstrations reported in Indian Farming (December 2025) show the effect. Sugarcane equivalent yield rose by about 28 per cent, from 150 tonnes per hectare under sole sugarcane to about 192 tonnes per hectare in the intercrop. Sugarcane equivalent yield expresses the sugarcane and maize output together in sugarcane terms, so this reflects the combined gain, not a rise in sugarcane’s own yield. Net profit reached about Rs 5.75 lakh per hectare against Rs 4.50 lakh for sole sugarcane, an additional Rs 1.25 lakh per hectare, with a further cost saving of Rs 1.01 lakh to Rs 1.48 lakh per hectare. Maize yields in the system ranged from 4 to 8 tonnes per hectare, and the maize income covered the entire cost of sugarcane cultivation.

The scale is where the ethanol link becomes clear. ICAR-IIMR estimates the model can be adopted on about 15 lakh hectares, roughly a third of India’s yearly planted sugarcane, producing more than 60 lakh tonnes of maize a year. That maize is aimed at dual-feed ethanol distilleries, plants that can run on both sugarcane juice or molasses and on grain, of which ICAR-IIMR counts about 500 sugarcane-based units. Because the maize is grown on land already under sugarcane, the extra feedstock does not require new area, which addresses the food versus fuel land concern that scales with higher blends.

The model also carries broader benefits noted in the study: better use of land and water, improved soil health, lower weed pressure, and green fodder from detopped maize. Read alongside India’s ethanol story, it is a supply-side answer to a demand that is already policy. For maize markets specifically, a steady new source of 60 lakh tonnes would also bear on the competition between ethanol and poultry feed for grain, a balance worth watching as blending rises.

The government’s own procurement prices underline why maize sits at the centre of this feedstock question. Maize commands the highest ethanol procurement price of any feedstock, at about Rs 71.86 per litre.