New Delhi: The phrase ‘confess the corn’ is an American adage of 19th century vintage. It means admitting a mistake or, at the least, acknowledging an error. The exact origin of the phrase is unclear, though some sources point to a debate in the US Congress around corn that was either exported or fed to pigs. Here is an example from a New York daily (Spirit of the Times, 1942): “Your honor, I confess the corn. I was royally drunk.”
India’s farm commodity market is heading to its own ‘confess the corn’ moment. True to the original phrase, corn or maize is a protagonist to watch out for. So are a host of fellow crops: sugar, rice and soy. In a way, this can turn into a potboiler with some bad actors, like a venerable, thrown in.
We know how it began. But we don’t know how it may end.
The story so far: in recent months sugar prices have shot up by a staggering 40% on-year. This is because last year’s sugarcane crop was damaged by both excess rains and a freak fungus, red-rot disease, which lowered yields. Yet, sugar mills painted a rosy outlook. Sugar was diverted to make ethanol for blending in petrol and some of it was even exported. Sugar prices rose sharply from ₹49 at the end of July to ₹65 per kg at the end of August, just ahead of the festive season when demand spikes.
No one yet has ‘confessed the corn’, or admitted to overestimating the availability of the sugarcane crop by a wide margin. The Indian Sugar and Bio-energy Manufacturers Association, or Isma, lowered its gross output forecast for sugarcane from nearly 35 million tonnes in July last year to 34.4 mt in November, and further down to 31 mt last month. These estimates, for the sugar supply year 2025-26 (October-September), are gross numbers that include sugar used to produce ethanol and for exports.
About is manufactured using sugarcane-based feedstock, with the rest coming from grains, particularly maize, the ministry of consumer affairs, food and public distribution said in a statement in August. It became more important to ensure adequate ethanol production as India made E20 petrol—20% ethanol and 80% conventional petrol—the standard across the country from 1 April 2026.
But even as the overall sugarcane output dropped, , while 0.8 mt was exported, as per Isma and the food ministry. The diversion for ethanol had followed upbeat sugarcane production estimates. If the early estimates were closer to reality, the shortage and may have been avoided, said Siraj Hussain, former agriculture secretary.
Isma, in a statement issued on 2 September, denied any structural deficit in sugar supply and stated that the industry was equipped to satisfy every pocket of demand.
Yet, the combination of lower sugarcane output and diversion for ethanol could trigger a domino effect impacting seemingly unrelated sectors.
Consider this: with deficit rains affecting the cane crop currently in the fields, next season’s output is likely to take a hit. No agency has yet offered any production estimate for next year, but industry insiders and experts are certain that in the coming season (2026-27) beginning October, sugar will not be allowed for manufacturing ethanol.
In effect, it will fall on corn or maize to do the heavy lifting in . That means higher demand for corn. But then, corn output is also likely to be smaller this year (2026-27) due to lower planted area and sub-par yields caused by deficit rains, as per poultry and ethanol industry insiders.
“It’s going to be a hand-to-mouth situation for the ethanol industry,” warns Chandra Kumar Jain, president of Grain Ethanol Manufacturers Association (GEMA), a biofuel industry lobby. Jain estimates that maize requirement for ethanol will rise by 40–50% next year (assuming the quantity of rice supplied remains the same). Because maize will have to fill the void left by sugar.
Now, corn is a major energy source for India’s growing poultry industry, a market estimated to be in 2025. Corn prices have already touched new highs ahead of harvest. Meanwhile, soybean meal, another major input for the animal feed industry, has also turned costlier, owing to a global increase in oilseed prices.
Which means the poultry sector is up for a major cost spike.
For consumers, this will likely translate into higher prices for items like eggs and chicken meat.
Both ethanol makers and the poultry industry are hoping India will offer more rice from public stocks to make ethanol. Just to ease the pressure on corn. That hope rests on forgetting, at least momentarily, that rice is a water-guzzling crop with a heavy climate footprint, which experts argue should have a limited role in ethanol production. The uneasy truth is that rice prices are also rising (currently exhibiting an 8% year-on-year spike, as per the consumer affairs department).
So, a potboiler is churning. To repeat, the primary actors are: sugarcane, corn and rice. The second-order impacts: rising costs for the poultry and processed food industry, which uses sugar, starches and proteins. Plus, a spike in consumer food prices—from eggs and sugar to rice and edible oils.
In short: the food-fuel trade-off may end up sharpening price spikes in a deficit rainfall year. This spike will come on top of already rising prices: from a low of 2.13% in January.
‘Right to corn’
This year’s monsoon season has seen a rainfall deficit of 15% as of 14 September, as compared with the 50-year average, with more than half of India’s area recording a deficit of 20% or more compared with the normal. India’s meteorological office has forecast a drier-than-usual September, the last of the four-month monsoon season.
The monsoon in 2026 has been the most spatially distorted in a decade, or unevenly spread across regions, ratings agency Crisil warned earlier this month in a report titled ‘The New Economics of Rainfall Shocks’. The key question now, it said, is not what farmers have sown, but whether planted crops can withstand deficit rainfall in areas with poor irrigation support. Maize and soybean are among key crops vulnerable to deficit rains, according to the report.
For both the ethanol and poultry sectors, maize is a key input. Maize comprises around 55% of poultry feed by weight. Over half of the ethanol produced in the country is made using corn as feedstock.
The Foreign Agricultural Service of the United States’ Department of Agriculture (USDA) expects India’s corn production to take a 10% hit in 2026-27. “Field sources report that the kharif corn crop planting was delayed by about two weeks, and the standing crop is facing moisture stress in the major corn-growing states in south and peninsular India,” the agency reported on 28 August. It added that prolonged dry spells or abnormally heavy rains and floods at the time of harvest can affect crop output. Planting of winter-planted (rabi) and summer corn (next year) may also be adversely affected if deficit rains persist.
“Last year, corn prices fell (following a record harvest), so more farmers switched to soybeans,” says Divya Kumar Gulati, chairman at the Compound Livestock Feed Manufacturing Association of India. Gulati adds that crop surveys commissioned by the industry group suggest that corn acreage is down by nearly 7% year-on-year. In addition, yields are expected to be lower due to deficit rains. According to the agriculture ministry, corn planting area is lower by 3.2% year-on-year (as of 4 September).
“There is little doubt that maize will be in short supply,” says Gulati. “Our request to the government is that poultry farmers, and not ethanol makers, should have the first right to the crop.” Gulati underlined that while ethanol can be produced from multiple sources, maize is the sole source of energy for poultry birds.
Here’s how the numbers stack up so far. Current wholesale maize price is around ₹27 per kg—a spike of over 30% as compared with prices in May-June. Trade expects prices to come down in October with the arrival of the new crop, but those prices will be higher compared with last year’s wholesale prices.
The impact is already evident. Wholesale egg prices in Delhi touched a high of ₹6.7 per piece in July, nearly 39% higher than July 2025 prices. Egg prices softened in August with falling demand (as consumption falls during the month of Shravan, considered an auspicious period per the Hindu religious calendar), but were still 7% higher year-on-year.
Obada Habib, a poultry entrepreneur from Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, explained that corn demand for the poultry sector is likely to be robust in the coming months. Over the past year, there was significant mortality due to bird flu and the summer heatwave. But now, firmer prices have pushed the industry to bring into production more layer chicks, which are hatched specifically for commercial egg production.
The number of birds placed in production hubs like Hyderabad in Telangana, Barwala in Haryana, and Namakkal in Tamil Nadu has multiplied. This will lead to a significant increase in demand for maize. The winter months are also when consumption of poultry products witnesses a spike, which, again, would see prices firming up.
“Poultry feed prices have already surged, rising from ₹25 per kg in April to over ₹30 per kg now,” Habib said.
The ethanol dilemma
India achieved a blending rate of 20% ethanol in petrol in the ongoing ethanol supply year 2025-26 (November to October), five years ahead of schedule. But the government could consider moving to a lower blending ratio when feedstock crops like sugar and maize are in short supply, Delhi-based think tank ICRIER said in a 8 September policy brief.
Titled ‘Food vs Fuel: Recalibrating India’s Ethanol Blending Strategy’, the brief authored by agricultural economist Ashok Gulati and researcher Tanmoy Adhikary calculates that ethanol demand for blending in petrol grew from a mere 1.7 billion litres to an estimated 12 billion litres between 2019-20 and 2025-26—an annual average growth rate of 38% in six years.
In comparison, production of feedstock crops grew at a much slower place—11% for maize, 4.4% for rice, and 5.1% for sugarcane.
This widening gap is creating a growing food-vs-fuel trade-off, which is now evident in the sharp rise in sugar prices, the authors wrote.
“The issue is not whether ethanol should be part of India’s energy mix… The concern is whether the pace and structure of expansion are consistent with the growth of the agricultural resource base from which the ethanol is produced. Today’s pressure is visible in sugar, where a combination of low opening stocks, lower production and continuing diversion to ethanol has coincided with a sharp 44% rise in prices within one month,” the authors said, adding, “tomorrow, the same pressure could emerge in maize, with implications for poultry and livestock feed and, consequently, for the prices of eggs, meat and milk; or in rice, where diversion of grain to fuel raises a different set of food-security, fiscal and water-use questions.”
How are ethanol manufacturers planning to navigate this tricky phase?
“It is certain that sugar will not be available to make ethanol. This means nearly 2.8 billion litres of ethanol production will have to move from sugar to grains like maize and rice,” said Jain, president of the Grain Ethanol Manufacturer’s Association.
If rice allocation for ethanol is not raised, ethanol makers will need more maize. Maize demand will increase from 16–17 mt in 2025-26 to 23–24 mt next year, Jain said. Add to this the annual needs of the poultry sector (23–24 mt) and starches used by food and other industries (another 10 mt). That adds up to a demand of more than 55 mt of maize. Last year, Indian farmers produced enough maize (estimated at 55 mt) to cater to these sectors but that performance is unlikely to be repeated next year.
Jain added that maize prices have already increased sharply, just ahead of harvest. “So, we are hoping that the government will allow diversion of excess rice stocks (held by the Food Corporation of India),” he said.
However, diverting excess rice supplies to make ethanol will not be an easy choice. Since rice is a resource-intensive crop that needs large quantities of water and heavily subsidized power and fertilizers and emits potent greenhouse gases like methane, using the grain to make a biofuel will nullify the positive environmental benefits of ethanol blending.
In the current ethanol supply year (2025-26), rice accounted for nearly a quarter of ethanol production.
Another challenge is that despite surplus stocks, retail rice prices have risen by 8% year-on-year as of 13 September. “Global demand for rice (where India is the largest exporter) is high. Rice planting is lower (by 3.7% compared to last year) and retail prices are already rising,” said Shweta Saini, chief executive at Delhi-based Arcus Policy Research. “An added risk is that the outlook for winter wheat is grim because deficit rains will impact water storage levels in reservoirs and wheat yields may suffer due to a scorching summer next year (a fallout of a record shattering El Niño).”
For now, India could push more rice to make ethanol. But then, the recent price spike in sugar can transmit to tomorrow’s maize and rice prices. And tomorrow’s maize and rice highs can feed into wheat, your daily bread, by next summer.
By then it will be too late to ‘confess the corn’.