At present, there is no single mechanical harvesting system available to handle the wide range of field conditions prevailing all over the world. Field conditions can vary from hilly land and presence of rocks to dry or wet soils requiring planting either at the bottom of the furrow or at the top of the ridge. Cane yield can vary from 60 to over 200 t/ha, the stalks being erect or recumbent with length in the range of 2 to 5 meters. Since the Brazilian landscape is hilly, planting and harvesting methods are different from those used in flat regions.

The Australian chopped cane principle and Louisiana’s whole cane system are the two main harvesting technologies available in the world today. Other cane producers that are performing mechanical harvesting use derivations of these systems. Cuba, for example, utilizes KTP cane harvesters, which have a design based on the Australian technology principle (Gomez Ruiz, 1992).

The development of Australian technology was motivated by lack of labor for cane harvesting. Prototypes designed by farmers in the 1960s introduced chopping as a way to mechanically transfer the harvested product by free fall to the transport vehicle running side by side with the harvester. Chopping eliminates the whole cane loading operation. However, the cost of an adequately managed whole cane har­vesting system can be inferior to that of a chopped one if cane losses and harvester idle time are accounted for in the cost analysis (Braunbeck and Nunez, 1986).

Louisiana’s soldair is economically the most efficient mechanical harvesting system for whole cane available at present (Richard et al., 1995). This harvesting system was developed for erect cane, which usually have short growing periods of about 7 months. As a result, it is not satisfactory to cut and feed the Brazilian cane crops, mainly the first cut, since the cane can easily fall at the harvesting period.

In the US, four different sugarcane regions utilize different harvesting prac­tices. In Texas, the chopped cane system is used (Rozeff, 1980). In Hawaii, a locally adapted push-rake system is used which combines higher harvesting costs and lower cane quality. In Florida, the various systems described so far are found, that is, chopped cane, whole cane and manual cut.

In Colombia, where the government has set the year 2005 as the deadline to eliminate preharvest burning, work is underway to develop a harvester for collecting and chopping cane and cane residues. A major challenge in the development of the machine is to reach the high yields that characterize Colombia’s Valle del Cauca sugarcane producing region (Ripoli et al., 1992).

Changing from burning to a full green cane harvesting practice requires com­prehensive planning at various levels. The mechanical systems mentioned earlier are not optimally suited for Brazilian green cane either from the standpoint of harvesting costs, or from the point of view of the cane quality or losses incurred in harvesting. Technical adaptations are required to meet topographic, agronomic and sugarcane processing needs typical to the Brazilian context. Low-cost appropriated technology is still required to overcome not only cane harvesting difficulties but also trash recovery, baling and transportation. The full implementation of these technological shifts will only be possible if an innovative generation of engineers is able to eliminate the bottlenecks prevailing from cane mechanization to trash recovery and utilization.