ABSTRACT
This chapter is structured into two sections; namely land suitability and crop handling. The land suitability section commences with a description of the land and resource requirements for the economically viable production of sugar cane. It then reviews studies into where these requirements are met, carried out at different scales. The most recent of these consider sugar cane as a bioenergy feedstock and therefore additionally assess where it can be grown without detrimental impacts on biodiversity, food security and rural livelihoods. The studies clearly reveal that Africa has enormous potential to grow rain-fed sugar cane as a bioenergy feedstock. However, estimates of suitable and available land vary considerably because the different models use different key sugar cane growth determinants, integrate them differently, and exclude different land types as inappropriate for bioenergy feedstock production. It concludes that land suitability and land availability mapping should be the leading tool in sugar cane bioenergy investment planning in Africa, and suggests the path that needs to be followed to achieve this. The second section describes the practices as well as the challenges of harvesting and transporting the crop to factories in Africa. The need for efficient coordination of the logistics is highlighted, together with the need to rethink the widespread practice of burning cane before harvest. Costs and opportunities for using crop residues as a source of energy, instead of burning them in-field, are considered, leading to the conclusion that this is attractive under some conditions but that the agronomic value of cane residues has tended to be underestimated and must be considered carefully when designing systems for the collection of residues.
