Completed projects and reports

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Integrating and optimising farm-to-mill decisions to maximise industry profitability : SRDC Final report CSE005
(2006) Higgins, A; Prestwidge, D; Sandell, G; Antony, G; Laredo, L; Thorburn, P
Late in the 1990’s, the Australian sugar industry recognised the need to achieve increased integration across its value chain, so as to reduce costs and increase international competitiveness. Past projects and independent assessments highlighted the harvesting and transport interface as being a high priority due to its current logistical inefficiencies and large potential economic benefits from removing these. The logistical inefficiencies were partly manifested by the social and ownership differences between these sectors. CSE005 aimed to explore and implement multiple opportunities to achieve economic benefits at the harvesting and transport interface of the value chain, using a combined participatory action research and technical modelling approach. The project used case studies, initially being the Mourilyan, Mossman and Plane Creek regions. Each case study had a local industry working group, to drive the process of building models, validation, and developing pathways to adoption. Mourilyan was the basis for the model development due to the broad range of opportunities that the region was to explore and due to its technical capacity to work closely with the research team. This research team was multi-disciplinary across CSIRO, BSES and Harvesting Solutions due to the broad range of modelling expertise required in harvesting and transport. One of the first steps with the Mourilyan case study was to conceptualise the value chain in harvesting and transport, which defined the key linkages and drivers across these sectors. This was the basis for formulating a modelling framework which defined the interactions between the industry component models, some of which already existed within the industry. A modelling framework approach was better than building a super-model since it was more transparent to the local industry working groups, more robust and had greater industry ownership. Throughout the life of the Mourilyan case study, the modelling work underwent many revisions (over a one-year timeframe) through the participatory action research process. During this process, the case study regions developed and refined options (or scenarios) for the models. This provided the case study working group with a growing understanding of best-bet options for the local region and the benefits across the participants of the chain. Opportunities identified across the case study regions collectively fell into the themes of: increased time window of harvest through staggering the start times of harvesters; harvest best practice; improved seasonal logistics; transition to larger harvesting groups; and rationalisation/upgrading of transport infrastructure. Their collective potential benefits from these options was in excess of $2.00/tc for some case studies. The increased time window of harvest option was adopted immediately in the Mourilyan and Mossman regions due to minimal change management and no capital investment requirements, and continued to be implemented throughout the life and beyond CSE005. Harvest best practice started to be piloted in Mourilyan as a result of CSE005, though its adoption was often hampered by pressure to fill bins and disruptions. Whilst the Mourilyan and Mossman regions agreed the time window of harvest options were beneficial, an evaluation based on factual data was impossible due major changes in the base line evaluation (e.g. changed number of harvesting groups, tonnes crushed at each mill) from 2002 to 2005. About mid-way through CSE005, the Mourilyan and Plane Creek case studies ended pre-maturely due to reasons beyond the control of the project team. Whilst this was a disappointment for the project team and for many of the participants in the local industry working groups, the Herbert quickly became a replacement case study.
Precision agriculture; an avenue for profitable innovation in the Australian sugar industry, or expensive technology we can do without? : SRDC Final report CSE018
(2007) Bramley, R; Webster, T; Thorburn, P
Precision Agriculture (PA) is an all-encompassing term given to a suite of technologies which promote improved management of agricultural production through recognition that the potential productivity of agricultural land can vary considerably, even over very short distances (a few m). The key technologies involved are yield monitors, remote and proximal sensing, the global positioning system (GPS) and geographical information systems. This project was conducted in response to the recognition by the Sugar Research and Development Corporation (SRDC) that the Australian sugar industry needs an informed basis from which to make decisions as to appropriate investment in PA. The project took the form of a review of published literature on PA and two industry workshops: the first conducted mid-project to provide the Industry Reference Group with an opportunity to review project progress and to make input to the recommendations emerging from it; the second conducted at the completion of the project to inform industry of the conclusions drawn and to promote industry input into SRDC’s priority setting with respect to future PA research. The review briefly discusses the philosophy underpinning PA, looks at PA research and application in a range of cropping systems, including sugarcane production, from around the world and considers the key drivers of short range spatial variability in these production systems. Constraints to the adoption of PA and its likely economic benefits are also considered in light of experiences from around the world. The opportunities that PA offers to the Australian sugar industry are identified, along with recommendations of further research, development and extension to facilitate its productive and profitable adoption. It is concluded that sugarcane production is ideally suited to the adoption of PA. However, a number of key tasks in Research, Development and Extension (RDE) are identified which will be required to enable its implementation in the Australian sugar industry.
Increasing in-mill NIR effectiveness and communicating data to all sectors for improved decision making in the sugarcane value chain : SRDC Final report CSR038
(2009) Markely, J; Griffin, D; Staunton, S; Thorburn, P; Crowley, T
In 2005 Mackay Sugar introduced changes to their cane payment formula that primarily used Near Infra Red (NIR) data as the basis for grower payments. The cane payment system was based on the principle of sharing risks and rewards, and removing obstacles to cooperation between industry sectors. The confidence gained from Mackay Sugar’s introduction of NIR technology and it’s subsequent acceptance by industry stakeholders in the Mackay Sugar region was initially the basis on which CSR developed a project proposal that sought as one of it’s objectives to further advance NIR technology in association with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) into precision agriculture (PA). Advancement in PA offered an opportunity to improve the productivity, profitability and environmental performance of the growing and harvesting sector through the use of NIR generated data. To gain the necessary benefits, further development of NIR calibrations, particularly in plant nutrients needed to be undertaken. At the commencement of the project CSR had an undertaking to introduce NIR technologies into their factories starting with an installation at Invicta Mill. Unfortunately after a series of events that eventually lead to CSR abandoning the introduction of NIR technology, the project was redefined at the start of the 2008 season under the management of Mackay Sugar staff. The failure of CSR to provide data as detailed in the original project proposal did have an effect on some outcomes and is reported in the details of the final report.

Completed projects and reports

Browse

Filters

Advanced Search

Filter by

Settings

Sort By

Results per page

Search Results