9.5 million hectares (95,000km²), that’s how much land the Brazilian sugar cane sector needs each year to produce 667 million tonnes. The world’s largest producer, the 30 delegates from Africa and the Middle East that attended this year’s edition of Case IH’s Sugar Camp workshop enjoyed a tour of one of the country’s largest growers.
The São Martinho Group, which farms 300,000ha at four locations at Pradópolis near Sao Paulo, uses a staggering 183 Case IH sugar cane harvesters! Achieving production levels of 930t/machine/day, São Martinho has an annual crushing capacity of 23 million tonnes.
Following the 2016 Sugar Camp in Australia, this year’s event featured an 800km tour around the State of São Paulo, which is responsible for 90% of the country’s sugar output. The six-day tour included a visit to Case IH’s 104,000m² facility in Sorocaba, which in addition to making as many as 8,000 machines a year, also manufacturers sugar cane harvester components. Also at Sorocaba, the 56,000m² logistics and parts distribution centre contains more than 150,000 different parts, and is CNH’s largest in Latin America. Another Case IH plant was on the agenda at Piracicaba, and a 12,000m² factory which in addition to self-propelled sprayers, planters and coffee harvesters, also makes the Austoft sugar cane harvester.
After visiting Case IH’s main dealer in Brazil’s sugar cane producing region, the group travelled to a technical institute in Campinas, a city northwest of São Paulo, which is where the Pró-Álcool Program was developed. Using sugar cane to produce ethanol as a fuel for motor vehicles, Brazil is now the world’s largest producer, and the alcohol-based fuel replaces over 40% of the country’s petrol requirements.
