Greening the Sugar Industry
Can biodynamic growing methods undo centuries of damage from sugarcane harvesting?
Most Americans don’t have time for a man like Leontino Balbo, Jr., because he wants to tell you everything.
While driving through his sugarcane fields in the northeastern region of Brazil’s Sao Paolo state, he identifies each swath of plantings by name.
"I know this cane like my sons," he says. "We have 40 varieties. This is 1842. This is 5453 ... ."
Balbo is the mastermind behind the Green Cane Project, a sugar-production operation that combines old-world ideals of land stewardship with modern technology to generate 90,000 metric tons of sugar a year from approximately 34,500 acres of certified-organic cane fields.
The Green Cane Project grew out of a desire to reverse some of the damage done by traditional sugarcane harvesting methods.
In the mid-1980s, Balbo had just earned his degree as an agronomist engineer and he suspected that the potential of his family’s sugarcane fields was literally going up in smoke.
At the time, they were still using slash-and-burn methods, which meant cutting cane by hand and then burning any leftover leaves to rid the fields of pests and "sterilize" the earth between harvests.
The first step to advancing away from slash-and-burn methods was to develop a mechanized way to cut the green cane.
Balbo’s company purchased special green-cane harvesters — gargantuan trucks affixed with blades to cut, load and transport up to 1,000 tons of cane per day.
The harvesters separate green stalks from the leaves (aka, cane trash). Now, rather than being burned as it once was, that trash remains on the fields to act as mulch and protect against erosion and sun exposure.
“We discovered the more diversity of insects, birds and plants, the more stable the ecosystem.”
Pests are the bane of most agriculture, but one of the Green Cane Project’s founding principles is that, under the right conditions, agricultural lands can reach homeostasis, a state in which the ecosystem will balance itself out, controlling any species that threatens to disrupt it.
Balbo built two entomological labs and hired teams of scientists to develop a pest-management system that does not rely on chemicals.
"Other producers are trying to get insects away from their farms, while we are trying to bring more," Balbo explains.
"We discovered the more diversity of insects, birds and plants, the more stable the ecosystem."
In most sugarcane fields, water is a problem. Cane stalks drink it up in massive quantities, requiring extensive irrigation systems, while runoff spiked with chemical fertilizers and pesticides feeds into streams and groundwater.
The Green Cane Project has improved soil water retention so much that there’s no longer any need for irrigation. Plus, three drainage ditches that were once used to divert excess water during the rainy season now flow permanently.
These new year-round streams are a direct result of the reduced evaporation caused by the grounds being covered at all times by cane stalks, mulch or rotation crops, Balbo says.
Another of the Green Cane Project’s goals was to recreate conditions in its fields that mirror as much as possible those of uncultivated soil. The project began employing biodynamic principles.
Rather than applying ready-made compost made of chicken or cattle manure, as most organic operations do, the project encourages the natural breakdown of organic materials by allowing and assisting with the growth of particular fungi and bacteria that aid in decomposing the cane trash, which is left to break down right alongside living stalks.
"When you use ready compost, the fields become lazy," Balbo says. "We start that process of homeostasis, and then the farm goes by itself."
"I tell them it’s not about price; it’s about a life mission," Balbo says.
In the past 15 years, the level of organic matter in the project’s cane-field soil has increased from 1 percent to 3 percent. (Virgin forest soil has 4 percent.) This added nutrient content may be one reason why the project’s fields and integrated forested areas — dubbed biodiversity islands — are able to support a wide variety of wildlife.
Green-cane harvesting is still in its infancy. It’s practiced in Australia and Brazil, but not much anywhere else. In Brazil’s Sao Paolo state, all growers were ordered to cease burning by 2017. Still, some of the Green Cane Project’s methods are contentious within the larger sugar industry.
Mae Nakahata, an agronomist for Maui-based Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co., which produces conventional raw sugar on approximately 37,000 acres, questions the use of vinasse — the fertilizer made of cane juice and yeast used by the Green Cane Project. HC&S applies no insecticides to its crops and has been using biological methods to eliminate pests since the early 1900s. However, the company still utilizes herbicides to manage weeds.
Nakahata says that HC&S uses these compounds sparingly, and that switching over to organic methods would require hiring extra workers to pull weeds by hand. Given Hawaii’s isolated location, that labor force is not readily available.
The Green Cane Project does employ laborers to do manual weeding; however, Balbo emphasizes that those jobs are held by people who want them. When the project transitioned away from hand harvesting, some former cane-cutters took the lower-skilled weeding jobs, while others were retrained to work in the entomological labs, assist with the biological surveys or operate the high-tech green-cane harvesters.
In the decade that it took for the Green Cane Project's fields to transition to organic and biodynamic methods, everyone had doubts, including, at times, Balbo himself. In the first few years, yields from his cane fields plunged from 85 tons per hectare — the average for a conventional sugar plantation in that area — to as low as 75 tons per hectare.
But as the conversion approached its eighth year, the fields began to show signs of rejuvenation. By the 10-year mark, they were suddenly producing 95 tons per hectare. Today, some of the project’s fields produce upwards of 110 tons per hectare.
Even with all of his success, Balbo still struggles to convince some of his countrymen to change their ways.
"They think we are trying to deceive them," he says. "Sometimes you have to talk to a 60-year-old person and then after you convince that person, he says, ‘OK, now I have to talk to my 90-year-old father.’
"I tell them it’s not about price; it’s about a life mission," Balbo says. "If you don’t understand that, this method is not for you."
Originally published by Natural Foods Merchandiser Magazine