Developing Cane Supply and Harvesting Schedules That Enhance Whole Industry Profitability

scheduling arrangements can potentially enhance whole An important question for sugar industries worldwide is, "What opportunities exist for modified cane supply and harvest scheduling arrangements to enhance whole industry profitability and competitiveness?" This is a complex issue, especially with vertical and horizontal expansion in production where consideration of crushing capacity and harvest season length are necessary. Given this complexity and the need to consider on-farm consequences on productivity and off-farm constraints related to transport, milling and storage capacity, this paper outlines a research approach to assess the consequences of different harvest scheduling options that integrate across the industry value chain. The approach has two key features: (i) multidisciplinary research integrating database technology, field experimentation, crop growth simulation modelling and operations research; and (ii) strong participation from industry (growers and millers) at all stages of the research process from initiation to delivery. Through case studies for several locations in the Australian sugar industry, it is shown that manipulation of cane supply scheduling offers the potential to substantially increase mill region net revenue by taking into account spatial and temporal variation in cane yield parameters.