Environmental, field and impurity factors to increase the agricultural performance of Brazilian and Australian sugarcane mills

Abstract

Graphic abstract This study aims to identify explanatory factors to increase the agricultural performance of Brazilian and Australian sugarcane mills. The relevance of Brazil and Australia for the sugar industry motivated the development this study based on the most important factors in both countries responsible for increasing the efficiency in sugarcane production. Thus, this study is designed to assess the hypothesis that there are a few explanatory variables that are deeply responsible for the agricultural efficiency in the sugar-energy sector. As a specific objective, it proposes a DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) model that seeks to optimize the production of Total Recoverable Sugar (TRS) by planted area, and simultaneously, minimizes mineral and vegetable impurities. The sample consists of 82 observations from 32 sugarcane mills. An agricultural efficiency study was performed using the two-stage DEA, in which the evaluated mills according to the level of efficiency in the proposed model. Then, a Multiple Linear Regression Analysis was performed to identify the variables with the greatest influence on the performance of the mills in terms of efficiency. The results revealed six relevant variables for increasing the agricultural performance in the production of sugarcane: rainfall (mm weekly), chopped cane delivery (%), delivery time (h), borer (%), air humidity (%), and rods in raw wine (× 10 5 /mL). Finally, semi-structured interviews with Brazilian and Australian experts in the sugar-energy sector allowed the identification of five other relevant complementary factors that were unavailable in the database: genetic variety, agricultural cultivation activities, edaphoclimatic factors, renewal of sugarcane fields and irrigation system. The results of this study were grouped into the dimensions of environment, yield, and impurities, providing quantification and better understanding of the identified explanatory factors and the agricultural performance in terms of production efficiency, offering fundamental information that enables managers to make decisions and prioritize the aspects that contribute more significantly to the increase in agricultural productivity of the planted area.

Cross-National Comparison of Dynamic Inefficiency for European Dietetic Food Manufacturing Firms

“…In contrast, many studies have analyzed the inefficiency of gross food manufacturing sector (e.g., Setiawan et al, 2012;Giokas et al, 2015;Gardijan & Lukač, 2018;Kedžo & Lukač, 2021), or several subsectors within food manufacturing (e.g., Ali et al, 2009;Shee & Stefanou, 2015;Boyd & Doolin, 2021). A vast amount of research has also been devoted to the inefficiency analysis of specific subsectors of food processing, such as meat processing (Kapelko, 2017;Kapelko & Oude Lansink, 2018), dairy processing (Soboh et al, 2014;Čechura & Žáková Kroupová, 2021), oils (Dios-Palomares & Martínez-Paz, 2011;Niavis et al, 2018), or sugar (Mulwa et al, 2009;Carlucci et al, 2021). Inefficiency studies of several subsectors of food manufacturing have also analyzed other food industries, but without distinguishing the manufacturing of dietetic food (see, e.g., Rezitis & Kalantzi, 2016;Rudinskaya, 2017;Kapya et al, 2018) 5 .…”

Impacts of Sugarcane Fires on Air Quality and Public Health in South Florida

“…In green harvesting, leaves can be left in the field as mulch ( Sandhu et al. 2013 ) or transported with the stalk to a processing plant where biomass can be used for fuel, bioethanol, or other products ( Carlucci et al. 2021 ; Cavalett et al.…”

Sistemas de produção de cana-de-açúcar visando a produção de açúcar orgânico certificado

“…O aumento histórico do cultivo dessa cultura no país é resultante de políticas públicas de incentivo à produção de etanol, com objetivo de aumentar a segurança energética do Brasil (Carlucci et al, 2021), levando o país a deter o programa de substituição de combustíveis fosseis pelo bioetanol mais bem-sucedido do mundo (Rossi Neto et al, 2021).…”