1. Agriculture: agronomic and harvesting practices for cane and the issue of co-cropping with sweet sorghum as a way of optimising the biomass resource.
   
2. Industry: the sugar and fibre resource streams and the agro-industrial processes and technologies that separate and exploit these resource streams.
   
3. Markets: articulation of product demand and formation of markets through sound policies, regulations, and economic incentives that promote efficient implementation and market strategies.
   
4. Impacts: socio-economic and environmental impacts across different strategies so as to insure that local and regional benefits are properly incorporated into decision-making frameworks.
   
5. Integration: including sustainable development, risk, competitiveness, the co-ordinating tasks and dissemination, associated with the diverse elements and linkages of the network.

The main forms of interaction within the network will be of three types:

• Meetings: The project team will meet a total of five times (M1 – M5) to plan for the workshops and the activities in each phase. The first meeting serves as a kick-off meeting. A final project meeting will include preparations for the final reports, an evaluation of the overall project, and a discussion of next steps with respect to disseminating the results of the project.
  
• Exchanges: (study visits). Exchanges or study visits (E1-E2) are programmed during the first 18 months of the project. They are restricted to the principal contractors only. For more details see section 5.
  
• Workshops: Workshops (W1-W3) are focused on the overall project objectives as well as the specific objectives within each work package (see the next section). Although there are many linkages across the different phases and work packages, it is expected that the workshops will emphasise different phases, as dictated by the logical flow shown in figure 3. The first workshop will focus on agricultural and industrial aspects, the second workshop on markets and impacts, and the final workshop on integrating aspects. Two co-ordinators will be appointed for each workshop, based on the relevant work package assignments, including a developing country and an industrialised country partner. The workshop co-ordinators will be responsible for the workshop proceedings.

The main activities and deliverables in the project are of six types:

• The aforementioned workshop proceedings (P1-P3);
  
• Industry surveys (S1-S2). Two industry surveys will be distributed to a representative sample of factories in the region and will be designed to gather basic information on technical configurations, product markets, and utilisation levels for cane resources;
  
• Annual reports (A1-A4) will include contributions from each partner;
  
• Thematic reports (R1-R5) will be written sequentially for each of the five thematic (institutional) phases: agriculture, industry, markets, impacts, and integration;
  
• The Internet website (I1-I8). It will be updated bi-annually and will serve to disseminate the results of the project to a wide audience;
  
• Electronic newsletters (N1-N8). A bi-annual newsletter, with contributions from project participants, will be published and posted on the website;

(1) Agriculture: WP1, WP2
(2) Industry: WP3, WP4, WP5
(3) Markets: WP6, WP7, WP8
(4) Impacts: WP9, WP10
(5) Integration: WP11, WP12, WP13, WP14