Harvest Mate Auto – Improving Economic Outcomes
The project builds upon previous investment by SRA and DAF in a harvesting decision support tool (original manual version or Harvest Mate Manual). Harvest Mate is a detailed costing decision support tool that is available free to industry through a web-based portal and app. It enables users to tailor their information and determine the most optimum settings accounting for not only revenue changes. Key limitations of Harvest Mate Manual are that it a) requires substantial time to manually enter paddock and harvesting data, b) relies on estimates of paddock yields prior to harvest, and c) is only applicable for green cane harvesting with standard single row machines. Whereas Harvest Mate Auto will be applicable for burnt cane harvesting in the Burdekin and NSW, whilst encompassing newer machines on the market (i.e., dual row harvesters). This will make Harvest Mate Auto useful to identify optimal harvesting practices for all grower and harvesting stakeholders across the Australian sugarcane industry.
Objectives
The Harvest Mate Auto project will integrate live feedback from harvester monitoring systems and enable automation of data entry to generate real-time predictions of optimal harvesting practices. Harvest Mate Auto will incorporate new information for burnt cane and dual row harvesters. This new automated program will be the first of its kind for increased profitability in harvesting operations. Unlike yield and loss monitors that are solely production focused, Harvest Mate Auto will be the first real-time harvesting decision support tool that considers both agronomic and economic outputs to predict optimal harvesting practices with algorithms derived from Australian contextualised data.
Expected Outputs
• Data capture automation and live feedback coupled with burnt cane and dual row harvesting.
• Production Algorithms for dual row-harvesting trials and burnt cane trials.
• Updates to DAF’s harvesting economics auto-costing model and harvester economics calculator spreadsheet including any updates required to accommodate the Production Algorithms.
• Updates to Harvesting Predictive Model (HPM) including any updates required to accommodate the Production Algorithms and updates to DAF’s harvesting economics auto-costing model and harvester economics calculator spreadsheet.
• Updates to HarvestMate online harvesting decision support tool with user interface (to create Harvest Mate Auto and enable live feedback and data automation through integration with harvester monitor system/s).
Expected Outcomes
Industry and, in particular, growers and harvesting groups will gain access to Harvest Mate Auto that links live harvesting information into a decision support tool (Harvest Mate) which assists in guiding economically optimum harvester settings. The benefit of this product is it will be accessible for the entire Australian sugarcane industry (green cane, burnt cane and dual row harvesting).
Harvest Mate Auto will provide growers and contractors with an opportunity to increase cane and sugar yield. Research conducted by SRA and DAF demonstrated that changing harvesting parameters from ‘operator practice’ to ‘optimised practice’ can increase cane yield by 5.2% and sugar yield by 5% on average. Current adoption of Harvest Mate is 6% of cane supplied to the industry (after one year of the product being released). Data automation and live feedback coupled with burnt cane and dual row harvesting has the opportunity to increase adoption to 40% in four years. This increase would equate to an additional 480,000 tonnes to the crop, worth at least $34.4m to the industry at current sugar prices.
SRA PROJECT CONTACT: Dr Muyiwa Olayemi
RESEARCH AGENCY: Sugar Research Australia
CHIEF INVESTIGATOR: Dylan Wedel
PROJECT NUMBER: 2024/016
END DATE: 01/05/2027
Acknowledgements
The project is funded by Sugar Research Australia. SRA acknowledges and thanks its investors, including levy payers (sugarcane growers and millers) and the Commonwealth Government.
