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Sichter et al. (2005)), harvest and transport integration (e.g. Crossley and Dines (2004), Markley et al.
(2006)) and harvester automation (e.g. Esquivell et al. (2007)).
The most significant program aimed at increasing sugar industry profitability has been through a
whole of system approach to harvesting. Whiteing et al. (2001, 2002) and Agnew (2002) developed
what is known throughout the industry as Harvesting Best Practice (HBP). The ultimate aim of HBP is
to maximise profit to all parties, contribute to the sustainability of the sugar industry and to improve
sugar quality. HBP is a set of guidelines which examine harvester set-up and operational settings, field
conditions, farm layout, farm practice and their effect on harvester performance, cane quality, sugar
quality and industry profitability.
The key machine set-up and operational guidelines are focused on cane loss, cane cleaning and
finding a balance between these two issues.
HBP recommendations have been presented to the industry for a number of years and the economic
benefits have been well documented and rigorously defended. However, despite the significant
economic benefits, adoption of HBP has been slow. This has been due to industry skepticism about
sugar loss levels and pressure to minimise extraneous matter and transport costs. The invisible nature
of the sugar loss makes it difficult to convince some industry stakeholders of the importance of HBP.
In addition, it is also hard to encourage the adoption of HBP especially when it has long been
recognised that the current one-price, dollar-per-tonne payment method for harvesting does not have
built-in incentives to adopt best practice or supply quality cane. Better feedback is vital to overcome
the flawed harvester-payment system and enable negotiation of the best possible job at an acceptable
price for individual blocks.
As the primary revenue received is for sugar sold, the primary focus for HBP is maximising the size of
the revenue ‘cake’ and only then can more appropriate and more equitable ways of ‘dividing up the
cake’ be developed.
In the past, many component-research activities were aimed at increasing harvesting efficiency in the
Australian sugar industry. Many of these have been engineering approaches to improved harvester
design, including improved basecutters: (Schembri. 2000; Schembri et al. 2000; da Mello and Harris,
2001) and overall harvester design (Norris et al. 1998). Other approaches were targeted towards best
practice, for example the impacts of fan speed and pour rates (Agnew and Sandell 2002). Alternative
pricing schemes for harvesting have been studied (Chapman and Grevis-James, 1998) to better
quantify harvesting cost for the grower and to encourage incentives to lower the cost of harvesting.
While these approaches can add value to the harvesting sector, the improvements are not sufficiently
evaluated across the supply chain to consider the overall net benefits.
Mallee System
Initial studies on the mallee industry concluded that a harvesting methodology remains the largest gap
in the industry supply and processing chain. Hence, research and development has concentrated on
developing a harvesting system based on a chipper harvester.
Whilst most studies have focused on a systems perspective, the lack of a proven harvesting system
robust enough to harvest mallee commercially has constrained the availability of quantitative data.
The key to system improvement will be to know what product is the supply chain objective, and
develop a better understanding of the likely impacts of crop and machine performance factors on
overall system economics based on quantitative data. At this early stage it is possible to consider
where the biomass supply chain should terminate; at the field edge, or as energy output from a
biomass-fuelled boiler, or somewhere in between.
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