Development of a tropical production system for green cane.

The Colombian sugar industry is rapidly shifting to green carte harvesting as a result of environmental concerns and commuiiity pressure. The heavy cane crop under the tropical conditions complicates the management of green carze. The sugar. industry realized from the beginning that it wowld have to take a holistic approach to developing new production systems. Even before legislation was enacted to control burning, the sugar sector began to develop the components of a green cane production system within an overall strategy that has evolved as the program has developed. This strategy has marly facets including minimizing community pressure, continuous ongoing improvements to the production system, a flexible opportunistic approach to resolvirtgproblenw, development of various alternatives and the integration of many components into commercially viable technology packages. Although the initial reaction to the green production systems was to see green cane as a threat and a problem to be resolved a conscious efSort was made to look for potential advantages or opportunities inherent in green cane systems and to incorporate them. This paper describes the strategy and results obtained to the present.