Sugarcane

By Theresa McMenomy
 20 million hectares in cultivation
More area is devoted to sugarcane than
most cash crops produced in the tropics
Has very little nutritional value
Found in almost all processed foods
20% of calories consumed by Americans is
sugar
Every 2.5 days, Americans eat nearly a
half a kilogram (about a pound) of sugar
 History

400-350 BC- Sugar referred to in Indian

food recipes
5th Century- Chinese growing and making
sugar
6th Century- Sugarcane cultivated in
Persia (Invented conical sugar loaves)
 Arab Expansion
Westward
(Defeat of Heraclius in 636 and Invasion of Spain in 711)
Spreading Sugar throughout the Mediterranean

Introduced sugarcane, its cultivation, the art of

sugar making, and a taste for its different
sweetness to:
Sicily
Cyprus
Malta
Spain
Much of Maghrib (especially in Morocco)
Rhodes
Old World Plantations

Europeans of non-Moslem Europe

became familiar with sugar through the
Crusades
European Crusaders took advantage of
sugarcane by seizing the sugar
plantations
Produced the cane with slave labor
 New World Plantations
Spain and Portugals sugarcane knowledge is owed to
occupying Moors

Continued plantation tradition of slavery

As P. and S. initiated the sugar industry in the Atlantic

islands just as production in Greece, Italy, Spain and
north Africa was decreasing

European demand was increasing

Sugar increasingly becomes less of a luxury and status

symbol and more commonly used
British and French
Colonists
By the near mid-seventeenth century, first
considered producing sugar in the Caribbean
Many Colonists were small-scale cultivators of
limited means
Labor: Slave, political prisoners (petty criminals,
political and religious nonconformists, labor
organizer and Irish revolutionaries), and debt
and indentured servants
By late 17th Century, plantations replaced small
farmssharp increase of enslaved Africans
After emancipationSame Conditions
Continued regimentation of sugar
plantation routine many years after
slavery (Louisiana)
 Loading Cane onto the
Carrier en route to sugar
mill
Boiling Cane Juice
 U.S. Imperialism
Spanish-American War of 1898US seized Cuba and Puerto
Rico
1905US seized the D.R. (Occupied it from 1916 to 1924)
US capitalists controlled entire colonial Caribbean

Sugar Mills in the Dominican Republic (1930)

 Technology Problems
3 Reasons for persistence of poverty:
1. Results of new free market labor
2. Fast-paced economic integration to the U.S. economy
3. Introduction of the latest technological advances in sugar
mills

Technological improvements translated into falling price margins

between refined and raw sugar under the conditions of industrial
competition

Time required to refine sugar fell from 3 weeks to 16 hours (B/c of

combined use of steam, the vacuum pan, animal charcoal, and the
centrifugal machine)

Outstripped the increases in consumption and demand

 Sugar Trust (1887)
1890-91price war caused industrial concentration that
strengthened the Sugar Trustto control 98% of the
outpost of refined sugar in the United States
Initial attacks against the trust were quieted by the US
govts reliance on big capital for the organization of the
WWI economy
Populist antitrust movement declined

1922- American Sugar Refining Company allowed to

retain 25% interest in the National Refining sugar
Company, 31% interest in the Great Western Beet Sugar
Company, and a 34% interest in the Michigan Sugar
Company
 High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS
Sugars strongest competitor
US-leading producer of HFCS (about 8% of entire
sweetener market)
Primarily industrial
HFCS production
is justified only if
there is a nearby
production chain
Technology more
complex and more
capital intensive
 Proletarian Cause
1800- free trade turned sugar into a rare necessity of
every English person
Commoners around the world struggling to stabilize their diets
Increased purchasing but decline in nutrition
By 1900-Nearly 1/5 of the calories in the English diet were
from sugar

Because industrialization caused increasing

urbanization and urbanization entailed shifting
patterns of food consumption, sugar acquired
increasing importance in the dietary intake of urban
populations

Working families replaced traditional meals with bread and

jam and other sugar products to save time
 Major Environment
Impacts
Destruction of biodiversitycultivated
entire tropical regions, e.g. islands
Conversion of primary forest habitat
Soil erosion
Agrochemcial use
Organic matter from processing effluents
 Potential to Improve

Poor
Price too low to improve industry or
genetics
Better management practices are known
but producers are set in their ways
Subsidies for sugar beets and can and
market barriers in developed countries
are disincentives for producers to change
 Green Cane
Growers do not burn the foliage for harvest (Used
in Cuba, Australia and Brazil)
Avoids pollution
Improves soil fertility conservation
Lowers or eliminates consumption of
agrochemicals
Allows for the use of residues as fuel, animal feed
or raw material
Alternative to chemical fertilizersrecycled
wastes and residues (filter mud) and liquid
effluents as irrigated water
Multiple Uses
Sugarcane ethanol
Cane bagasserenewable
source of fibrous raw material
that can replace wood in
some applications and be
made into paper/cardboard
Wood replacement to forest
conservation
Industry by-products serve as
feed support for both
ruminants and swine
 Works Cited
2005 Agriculture and Environment:Commodities. Electronic document,
http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do_policy/agriculture_environment/commodities/sugarcane/ , accessed April 22, 2007.

Ayala, Cesar
1999 American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean 1898-1934. London: University of North Carolina Press.

Chasteen, John
2006 Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Classen, Constance
1996 SUGAR CANE, COCA-COLA AND HYPERMARKETS: CONSUMPTION AND SURREALISM IN THE ARGENTINE NORTHWEST. In Cross-Cultural
Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realitities. David Howes, ed. Pp. 39-54. London: Routledge.

Cordoves Herrera, Marianela

Cane, Sugar and the Environment. Electronic document, http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/X4988E/x4988e01.htm

Dye, Alan
1998 Cuban Sugar in the Age of Mass Production: Technology and the Economics of the Sugar Central 1899-1929. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Mintz, Sindey W
1985 Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History.
History. New York: Penguin Books.

Monreal, Pedro
2002 Development Prospects in Cuba: An Agenda in the Making.
Making. London: Institute of Latin American Studies.

Rodrigue, John
2001 Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisianas Sugar Parishes 1862-1880 . Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press.

Schwartz, Stuart
1985 Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.