HARVEST PLANNING FOR GROWERS

MOST SUGAR mill districts in Australia are characterised by large geographical and variety differences in sugar yield that vary throughout a harvest season. Growers are increasingly looking for ways to increase profitability by capitalising on these differences. This is a complex task as there are several variables such as variety, crop class, crop age, CCS, cane yield, and soil type to consider simultaneously when planning the harvest. SugarMax is a computerbased tool that has been developed to assist growers by capturing information on these variables to provide growers with the flexibility to simulate different harvest schedules for their farms. SugarMax uses CCS and cane yield trends based on historical productivity trends, linked with optimisation, to select the best combination of harvest times for cane land across the farms. SugarMax accommodates grower harvest rounds to ensure consistency with harvester equity as well as providing the grower with flexibility to include management decisions such as plough-out, rainfall risk and pests. In the Tully region, 18 growers developed harvest plans across 45 farms for the 2007 season using SugarMax. Growers in the Herbert region are using SugarMax to develop scenarios for partnering harvesting groups that take advantage of geographic differences in yield and rainfall throughout the season. They have also used SugarMax principles to identify areas in the region that would benefit from an early harvest start date. Growers surveyed in Tully enthusiastically support SugarMax as a valuable tool for farm harvest planning. The development of a web interface to enable wider adoption of the harvest planning tools in the Tully region is currently underway.