3.1.2. Ethanol productivity

Sugarcane, given its energy balance advantage, is likely to be beneficial if promoted as bio-fuel feedstock as this is likely to increase sugarcane prices to the benefit of the small scale farmer.

Promoting sugarcane as a feedstock for ethanol is likely to improve rural livelihood and also minimize on forest encroachment since energy output per unit land area is very high for sugarcane.

In Brazil for example the production of sugar cane for ethanol only uses 1% of the available land and the recent increase in sugar cane production for bio-fuels is not large enough to explain the displacement of small farmers or soy production into deforested zones " in [13] ".

To minimize competition over land, it is advisable to grow sugarcane that has high yields with higher energy output compared to other biofuel crops. High yielding bio-fuels are preferable as they are less likely to compete over land "in [16]".