Environmental Protection
The gradual eradication of pre-harvest sugarcane field burning is key to reduce local air pollution and improve air quality.
For centuries, sugarcane fields around the world have been burned to remove sugarcane straw (the plant’s tops and leaves), drive away snakes and other potentially poisonous animals, and make it easier for workers to cut the cane by hand. However, technological advances and environmental concerns have increased demand for mechanized harvesting because it eliminates the need to burn the field.
Mechanization already accounts for more than 70 percent of the harvest in São Paulo, Brazil’s top cane-producing state, and that proportion will grow to approximately 90 percent by 2014. It will be the only means of harvesting in São Paulo by 2017, thanks to the so-called Green Protocol.
Besides eliminating field burning, the 164 mills (out of the 178 total located in São Paulo) and 29 associations of sugarcane suppliers who signed the Green Protocol have committed to protect and recover 280,000 hectares of land alongside streams and riverbanks.
Over the last seven years, producers from Brazil´s Centre-South have invested around US$ 4.5 billion in equipment purchases to increase mechanized harvesting of sugarcane.