ABSTRACT
In developing countries, there is an overall agreement that the ideal production model favors rural development through an active participation of local communities. In this chapter, the authors explore nuances in the selection of the production model that can be useful for brand new initiatives or ongoing projects. The greatest challenge is to balance economic competitiveness with the engagement of smallholder farmers and their inherited low-productivity agricultural systems. There are two main alternatives to kick off sugarcane ethanol production: introduce sugarcane and build a new processing plant (greenfield distillery) or in countries that already produce sugar, start annexing an ethanol distillery to the sugar factory (brownfield distillery) and produce ethanol from final molasses. In this latter alternative, ethanol production is possible without compromising sugar output. In the greenfield alternative, cane production should increase in steps to avoid having all cane at the same age with yields going down continuously.
