Once, on a long trip, in the middle of the conversation, my friend said: “...they should invent a machine that takes direct energy from the sun”. “But there are already two”, I replied: photovoltaic cells and plants, through photosynthesis. The advantage of plants is that they are a lot of work.

Today, we recognize the cane field as a renewable solar panel, which uses solar energy to capture hydrogen and stabilize it with carbon. From there, we can use that hydrogen and return the carbon to be absorbed again. So, from a new point of view, in this cycle, carbon is the carrier and the charge is hydrogen, which can be seen as a bioenergetic hydrogen cycle, with a positive balance for carbon, because the greater the use, the greater the the amount of carbon that will be in the soil and in the biomass.

Agriculture with good practices has a positive carbon balance, as it increases the amount of crop biomass and organic material in the soil, with a gain in fertility. We have experienced many positive examples. In order to reflect on the sustainability of the sugarcane business, we could cite several indicators, but in our subject, we are going to deal with agricultural productivity, because the higher the productivity, the lower the demand per area.

Therefore, the main sustainability indicator of an agricultural company should be its productivity, expressed in tons of product per occupied hectare. Areas delimited for agriculture must be used with practices to maximize production, while areas delimited for environmental functions must be protected and managed for the purpose of conditioning the climate, biodiversity, water protection, production of some species and well-being.

Unfortunately, many of our lands are abandoned, neither agricultural, nor grazing, nor native. For the production of bioenergy, in regions where soil and climate conditions are favorable, sugarcane has botanical and natural advantages, especially due to its high photosynthetic efficiency. It has a production system with highly developed management technologies, equipment and inputs. And with perceptions of great potential for improvement, which motivate investments in innovations and creation of new opportunities.

Currently, the low average productivity of sugarcane in Brazil has been widely questioned. And this decline has often been attributed to the mechanization of planting and harvesting. In my opinion, the cause of this low productivity is not mechanization. I had the opportunity to work on farms and companies at the extremes of low or high productivity and mechanization. Some, 100% mechanized and with productivity well above 100 tons per hectare and longevity close to 10 cuts.

This low and stagnant productivity is an average within a universe with a wide range of variation. And, from my point of view, this amplitude does not seem to be directly proportional to mechanization, or innovation, or the availability of resources, but rather related to management, the effectiveness of choices, the maturity of organizations.

The management and process technologies currently available, accumulated over several decades until the latest innovations, result in a production potential and production guarantee that can practically double sugarcane production. Thus, we can make the following considerations. Currently, with few exceptions, the cultivated area does not have a tendency to expand in the short term, since, in addition to other commodities, are very competitive, there is an understanding that, first, it is necessary to improve productivity.

Systematization, which can be called ground preparation, is an operation that has undergone great conceptual and operational evolution in recent years. Before, it was practically synonymous with soil conservation, although often ineffective; currently, it is characterized by the conciliation of new concepts of soil and water conservation, the construction of soil profile and traffic control, with a new design of the cane field, a prerequisite for productivity and longevity in a mechanized system.

These changes in the terrain, which have lasted two decades, made the practice of no-till unfeasible. I believe that, after the stabilization of the cane field design, no-till needs to be remembered. In turn, the operation of soil preparation does not present relevant changes in concepts or operations in recent years. Techniques, inputs and equipment for the construction of a soil profile suitable for the desired production exist, and they are quite mature.

Today, the planting operation presents several semi-manual options and mechanization models, as well as the techniques of seedlings, seeds, Simultaneous Inter-Occupational Method, replanting, etc. All with conditions to result in productive and long-lasting sugarcane plantations, depending more on the management of technologies than on the chosen model.

When choosing sugarcane varieties, I continue to consider that the farmer must be bold to experiment and conservative to expand. That you must be moderate in multiplication, because multiplication is dangerously fast, while knowing takes a few years and methods. In fertilizers and pesticides, we currently offer solutions for practically all cases, with frequent errors due to excesses or lack of criteria or “technical comfort”, in the bad sense.

Mechanized harvesting without burning, which this year completes 35 years of practice, has created a production system acceptable to the market and continues to create business opportunities. Sugarcane has a lot of flexibility in terms of planting and harvesting times. It has good tolerance to weather variations, such as summers, frost, etc., because, having growth throughout the year, losses in one period can be offset by gains in others. For the industry, harvesting sugarcane without burning means the possibility of milling clean and fresh sugarcane, with a strong contribution to industrial yield gains, and the full potential of straw use. And logistics systems, increasingly stabilizing the process.

For process management, I see that, in agriculture, a result-centered focus can lead to failure, as the focus must be on the process. The farmer, by nature, applies care to each operation because he “believes” that, in this way, the result will come in the harvest. In other words, we have methods for setting goals and managing processes to ensure the result. Thus, with its natural characteristics and provision of management and process technologies, sugarcane has high production predictability, which gives reliability to investors and entrepreneurs at all points in the chain.