The new production system developed by Balbo Group allowed us to perform sugarcane harvest without burning it. The harvesters get the cane stalks while leaving the green straw over ground, creating mulch that protects the soil against erosion and insolation.

The cropfields also receive solid and liquid effluents coming from industrialization. Since a sugarcane field has a production cycle during six years in average, in which five harvests are obtained, the soil is only revolved every six or seven years. Besides that, every machine or vehicle entering the fields have high flotation tracks and tyres as a way to avoid soil compaction.

All these techniques help keeping soil fertility, by creating a favorable environment for benefic microorganisms’ action, as well as for water and air infiltration, which are essential for plant development. These activities were integrated to other actions like pest biological control, leguminous green manure crop in rotational system, adequate weed manegement and the creation of biodiversity islands among crop fields, leading to a balanced and harmonic relation between farmer and nature.