Development of the decision-support tool ‘Harvest Mate’: economic calculations

Improvements in sugarcane-harvesting practices remain critically important for productivity, profitability and sustainability gains in the Australian industry. The development of a decision-support tool to guide economically optimum harvester settings has the potential to add $44 million to grower revenue. The online ‘Harvest Mate’(HMate) tool was developed to reduce green sugarcane-harvesting losses and improve economic returns for growers. The ‘Harvest Mate’ tool includes the ability to set-up an online user profile for initial data capture that enables users to assess the most profitable harvester settings (e.g., flow rate and extractor fan speeds) infield. HMate can estimate harvesting cost changes and guide pre-season contract rate negotiations between the contractor and grower. The economic component of HMate incorporates both variable and fixed cost inputs, allowing the overall net benefit/loss to be determined for the grower. The highest net benefit output is defined as the most economically optimal harvester setting, accounting for the cost of harvesting and revenue achieved. HMate economic estimates show a high level of predictive accuracy for the cost/ha, cost/t and net benefit obtained when compared to actual detailed harvesting group costings. Slight differences were identified in the predicted cost/h results for HMate due to improvements in labour and fuel calculations. Information entered by users allows selection of the most profitable harvester settings for each unique situation that accounts for yield, CCS, and harvesting costs.