Rising production costs, primarily associated with increasing fuel and fertilizer prices, combined with a relatively flat to slightly declining market price trend, have significantly reduced profit margins from sugarcane production in Louisiana over the past few years. Harvest operations are one area in which growers can have considerable influence on costs per unit. Estimation of current sugarcane harvest costs as well as economic evaluation of the impact of various factors on the performance and cost of this production phase are important to growers in conducting these harvest operations as efficiently and cost effectively as possible.
The general objective of this research project was to estimate the current fixed and variable costs of harvesting sugarcane in Louisiana with combine harvest units and to determine optimal harvest schedules for groups of farms delivering sugarcane to a common mill. Using 2004 input prices, average estimated harvest costs were calculated to be $2.41 per ton for fixed expenses and $2.79 per ton for variable expenses, resulting in a total harvest cost of $5.20 per ton. A cost analysis conducted to evaluate the impact of increased truck waiting time at the mill on farm level harvest costs found that for every one minute of waiting time at the farm during harvest operations, the total harvest fuel and labor costs were increased by approximately $1.30 per acre.
An integer linear programming model was developed which simulated the daily delivery of approximately 10,000 tons of harvested sugarcane with the goal of scheduling harvest operations of all farms to better coordinate trucking operations. Results of the linear programming analysis demonstrated that transport operations between farm and mill, which impacts harvest operation efficiency, could be improved with better coordination of harvest operation scheduling across a large group of farms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-07122007-141201 |
| Date | 12 July 2007 |
| Creators | Barker, Francis Gil |
| Contributors | Lynn Kennedy, Michael E. Salassi, Steven Henning |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-07122007-141201/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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