Modeling and Forecasting of Sugarcane Production in South Asian Countries

Sugarcane industry is of crucial importance to the South Asian countries. These countries depend heavily on agriculture and the sugarcane industry has immense potential to contribute towards its economic development. Hence, the precise and timely forecast of sugarcane production is of concern for farmers, policy makers and other stakeholders. In this manuscript, we strived to forecast the production and growth rate of this important commodity using standard statistical approaches. The ARIMA (Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average) and ETS (Exponential Smoothing) models were applied and compared on the basis of their forecasting efficiency for South Asia countries. This study also investigated the trends in sugarcane production in the region and studies the causes of the decline in production of sugarcane in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Furthermore, the expected production for following 7 years was computed using both models. In addition, we also calculated the projected growth rates of sugarcane production of South Asian countries over the years 2020-2027.