Cana-de-açúcar: Um mar verde sobre um quinto do estado

Cerejo, Lucas Nakamura

doi:10.5281/zenodo.23538956

No. 030 Land use Bioenergy in São Paulo 3/4

Sugarcane

A green sea over a fifth of the state

Record, downloads and citation

Map of São Paulo state with municipalities coloured by the share of their territory under harvested cane in 2024, in six classes of the viridis palette, from yellow (up to 4.1%) to dark purple (51% to 82.1%). A continuous purple patch covers the north and centre of the state; the east, the Ribeira valley and Greater São Paulo are yellow, grey (zero) or hatched (no data). The five largest producers are named: Morro Agudo, Barretos, Guaíra, Jaboticabal and Rancharia. — Fig. 030 São Paulo state (SP) EPSG:4674 Source: IBGE

In 2024, São Paulo’s cane fields were harvested over 5.40 million hectares, 21.7% of the state, and yielded 418.6 million tonnes of cane. In 88 municipalities the harvested area exceeds half the territory; in Areiópolis it reaches 82%, and in Jaboticabal 81%. The map shows the dark patch that covers the north and centre of the state and has Morro Agudo as its largest producer (7.0 million tonnes), and it shows where the patch ends: in the Paraíba valley, the Ribeira valley and Greater São Paulo, cane all but disappears. Every tonne harvested leaves bagasse and straw, and every litre of ethanol leaves vinasse; this is the map São Paulo’s bioenergy rests on. Third plate of the collection “Bioenergy in São Paulo”.

Technical record · downloads · citation

At a glance

Layers

municipios polygon 645 municipalities: harvested area (ha), production (t), share of territory (%) and yield (t/ha)
regioes_intermediarias polygon 11 intermediate geographic regions
limite_estadual polygon State boundary

Metadata

Sources: IBGE — Municipal Agricultural Production (PAM), table 1612: temporary crops (2024)
IBGE — Municipal Mesh 2025 (2025)
Extent: São Paulo state (SP)
CRS / Projection: SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674)
EPSG:4674
Software: Python · GeoPandas · GDAL · QGIS · Node.js · d3-geo
Method: Harvested area and production of sugarcane from PAM 2024 joined to the Municipal Mesh by IBGE code; harvested area divided by municipal area, in six quantile classes.
Version: v1.0.0
Licence: CC BY 4.0
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23538956

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Figure to reuse

The map without a frame, with legend, scale, reference system and credit written on it: ready for papers, lectures and slides. In two versions: with the basemap (neighbours and sea) or only the mapped area, on white.

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How to cite

Cerejo, L. N. (2026). Cana-de-açúcar: um mar verde sobre um quinto do estado [Sugarcane: A green sea over a fifth of the state] (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23538956

@dataset{cerejo2026_cana_de_acucar_sp,
  author    = {Cerejo, Lucas Nakamura},
  title     = {Cana-de-açúcar: Um mar verde sobre um quinto do estado},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  version   = {1.0.0},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23538956},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23538956},
  language  = {portuguese},
  note      = {English title: Sugarcane: A green sea over a fifth of the state. Licence CC BY 4.0}
}

How to read this plate area, projection, scale, legend and source · 4 terms

1 Area: São Paulo state (SP) The area the plate covers. Outside it, neighbours and sea are drawn in grey, just for orientation.
2 Coordinates and projection: SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674) The layers are in SIRGAS 2000; the drawing’s projection is written in the colophon at the foot of the panel.
3 Scale: Graphic scale bar in the panel The scale bar is true on the central meridian; away from it, measured distances vary a little.
4 Legend and layers: 3 layers in the GeoPackage · polygon Read the legend before the map: it tells you whether a colour is a rate or a class, and whether a circle is a total.
5 Sources: IBGE (2024); IBGE (2025) Every figure comes from a public source, with its year. The data sheet gives each one’s address.

Terms on this plate

Harvest year: Cane years are not calendar years: in the Centre-South the harvest runs from April to March; in the Northeast, from September to August. That is why the two regions crush in opposite months.
Bagasse: The fibre left after crushing. Burnt in the boilers, it makes the mill’s own steam and electricity; the surplus goes to the grid.
Cane straw: Tops and leaves left in the field by mechanised harvesting since cane burning ended. Some can be collected for energy; some must stay to protect the soil.
Vinasse: The liquid left by distillation, around ten litres per litre of ethanol, rich in potassium. It goes back to the cane fields as fertiliser and can pass through a digester first.

Anatomy of a plate Full glossary

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Layers, table and figures, under CC BY 4.0. Cite with the DOI.

Full record and citation

Method notes · No. 030

Sugarcane — harvested area and production in São Paulo, 2024

Português · English

Plate No. 030, the third of four in the collection Bioenergy in São Paulo: the crop that, once harvested, leaves most of the state’s biomass in the field and at the mill.

What the files contain

Layer (GPKG)	Geometry	Contents
`municipios`	polygon	645 municipalities: `CD_MUN`, `NM_MUN`, intermediate region, `area_km2`, `area_colhida_ha`, `producao_t`, `pct_area` (harvested area ÷ municipal area, in %) and `rendimento_t_ha`
`regioes_intermediarias`	polygon	11 intermediate geographic regions
`limite_estadual`	polygon	outline of the state

The GPKG is zipped and attached to the repository’s bioenergia-sp-2026 release, together with those of the other plates in the collection.

The GPKG carries its own QGIS styles. The municipios layer has two: parte_do_territorio (the default, matching the plate) and producao (tonnes harvested, in six quantile classes). To switch, open the layer properties and pick the other style under Style › Styles. Zero shows in light grey and “no data” in white, each with its own line in the legend.

The CSV holds the same municipal table, in UTF-8, without geometry. In both files an empty cell (NULL) means no data, and 0 means a zero reported by IBGE.

Method

Table 1612 of the Municipal Agricultural Production survey on SIDRA: variables Área colhida (hectares) and Quantidade produzida (tonnes), product Cana-de-açúcar, year 2024, municipal level, São Paulo state.
Joined to IBGE’s 2025 Municipal Mesh by the seven-digit code.
Share of territory = harvested area ÷ (official municipal area × 100), in %, to two decimal places. Yield = production ÷ harvested area.
Classes: six quantiles of the municipalities with a positive harvested area; limits are rounded to two significant figures, and the last one is the observed maximum. The table’s “-” symbol (absolute zero) becomes 0; “…” and municipalities missing from the table become no data.
Intermediate regions and the state boundary are dissolved from the municipalities.
On the plate, geometries are simplified as a coverage; the downloadable files keep IBGE’s original geometry.

Limitations

Harvested area is not planted area: fields being replanted or left uncut that year are excluded, so cane’s real footprint tends to be larger than the map shows.
PAM is reported by municipality and does not say where, within it, the fields lie; for that, use a land use and land cover map.
45 municipalities have no data, most of them in Greater São Paulo and on the Santos coast; another 92 report zero.
The plate does not compute bagasse, straw or vinasse: those figures depend on coefficients that are not in IBGE’s table.

View this map’s folder on GitHub