Sugarcane

Source : Istockphoto

All varieties of sugarcane belong to a single species, Saccharum officinarum. The earliest form of word for sugar is sarkara in Tamil or Sanskrit and sakkara in Prakrit. Later, in Persian it was known as schakar, the sukkar in Arabic, suicar in Assyrian, saccharum in Latin, azucar in Spanish, and sucre in French.

Sugarcane has been around for a long time. It is mentioned in the Atharva Veda, an ancient Indian religious text written about 1000 BC as ikshu, which means something people want or desire because of sweetness. People chewed sugarcane to extract its sweetness. By the time of Gupta dynasty in India in 350 AD, they discovered the earliest form of sugar crystallization. Early refining methods involved grinding or pounding the cane in order to extract the juice, and then boiling down the juice or drying it in the sun to yield sugary solids that looked like gravel. By 600 AD, doctors in India and Persia were writing about sharkara and shaker. Most likely, the traveling Buddhist monks brought sugar crystallization methods to China where the first sugarcane cultivation began in the seventh century.

There are references to sugar in Greek history by Herodotus and Theophrastus as well. Sugarcane most likely was introduced in the Mediterranean Basin around 750 AD and was carried into Spain by the Moors. During the religious wars of the Middle Ages, the “sweet honied reeds” called zucra which abounded in the meadows about Tripoli were consumed by the Crusaders. Sugarcane was consumed the way it was meant to be. Chewing at the sweet cane was a delicious pastime and was supposed to help the teeth as well. To get the white crystalline sugar as we know today, it took a few centuries of time, a few million human lives, and lot of chemistry experiments.

Three broad trends in sugar development changed the course of human and sugar history.

1. The Rise of the Sweet Tooth

Until the fifteenth century, sugar was a fine spice which only the royalty could afford. In 1319, for example, would sugar cost at about two shillings a pound, or about $100 USD a kilogram. The wealthy used sugar in lavish desserts and had exotic sugar sculptures built for royal weddings and feasts. In October 1600, Marie de’ Medici became the queen of France by marrying Henri IV of the House of Bourbon. At the Medici banquet held in Palazzo Vecchio, the stars of the exhibition were the sugar sculptures. Venus, Hercules, even the King of France on a horse were some of the subjects made of sugar.

European traders were struggling to meet the demand for this exotic spice. The only places to source sugar were India, China, Spain, Cyprus, and the Mediterranean, but this supply was hardly able to satisfy the sweetening palates of the rich. The race started to look for new places where sugarcane could be grown in large quantities.

2. The Rise of Colonialism

In the 1500s, Portugal, Spain, France, England, and the Netherlands roamed the seas looking to expand their kingdoms. Armed with royal decrees, a strong navy, and guns, the likes of which the rest of the world had never seen, they arrived as explorers and traders and soon engaged in war and conquest. Brazil, Mexico, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and the Caribbean—these countries fell like dominoes one by one to the colonizing armies.

In 1493, Christopher Columbus took sugarcane to the Caribbean. His son and grandson were among the first successful European planters in Hispaniola, today’s Haiti and Dominican Republic. Soon, the need arose for laborers to work on the vast plantations.

3. Slavery in Modern Times

In 1441, Antão Gonçalves, a portuguese ship captain, bought some people off the coast of West Africa and took them as slaves to Portugal. Thus began a gory chapter in modern human history. Portugal was soon overtaken by the Spaniards and the British as they lay the continent of Africa to waste.

Between 1500 and 1800 AD, more than 11 million slaves were exported from Africa. Of those 11 million people, more than six million worked in the sugar plantations in the Caribbean (Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba, Barbados, and smaller islands). The rest worked in the gold mines, coal mines, and other areas.

By 1700, the island countries of Caribbean been transformed endless sugar plantations where African slaves toiled endlessly. The plantation owners made huge profits and led lavish lifestyles in England, Spain, and France, totally oblivious to the miserable living and working conditions of their slaves. In 1783, an anti-slavery movement was born. The abolitionist movement gained support, and in 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act led by William Willberforce was given the royal assent, thus abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire.

Although slavery ended, the demand for sugar and the need for cheap labor kept increasing. Britain, for example, consumed five times as much sugar in 1770 as it did in 1710. The tax on sugar was abolished in 1874, and as the price of sugar decreased, most households could afford it and demand soon swelled. Common folks grew used to enjoying tea and sugar. Having afternoon tea became a ritual in every household. To meet this increased demand, farmers needed to grow more and more sugar.
For the sugarcane farmers who were by now used to free slave labor, an alternate source of labor had to be found urgently. In 1842, the English parliament accepted Sir J.P. Grant’s proposal for indenture immigration with proper safeguards. Thus was born the indenture system in the 1840s. The system was a step better than slavery, but still relied on an exploitation of labor.

At the same time, the Industrial Age had dawned on human civilization. The advent of the machine drastically changed production and manufacturing, from textiles to steel and, of course, sugar. Some of the key inventions that influenced the sugar production include the first steam-powered sugar mill in Jamaica, which opened in 1768. In 1813, Edward Charles Howard invented a method of refining sugar using steam and a partial vacuum. Then in 1850, David Weston first used the centrifuge to separate sugar from molasses. All of these advancements helped produce more sugar at a lower cost, thus opening up the market to more and more of the public.

Below is a summary of the journey from sugarcane to jaggery and white sugar crystals.

Sugarcane manufacturing process
Source : Articles on internet

From the olden days of ox-driven mills, the steam engine transformed the entire process by powering extractors, boilers, and centrifuges. Machines eventually replaced the coolies on the farm who once sowed, weeded, and harvested the crops. By the 1950s, advances in farming equipment reduced the amount of labor needed on a farm by at least 90 percent.

Industrial farming is the order of the day, where seeding and harvesting machines work twenty-four hours a day, guided by sensors and satellites, without stopping to catch a breath or caring for the rain.

Today sugar alternatives are being developed in laboratories, a far cry from the days when the early settlers had to painstakingly try different methods for years to improve the quality of the sugarcane.

In 1967, high fructose corn syrup was invented, which hugely increased the sugar usage—and people’s waist lines and medical bills—across the globe. Corn syrup is made from corn. Corn is milled into corn starch, which is turned into corn syrup. Chemicals are added in the lab to break down the syrup into glucose and fructose. Low taxes on corn, abundant availability, and the ability to process very large quantities in the laboratory in a short time and at a low cost have made high fructose corn syrup significantly sweeter and cheaper than sugar from sugarcane.

In a very short span of time, high fructose corn syrup became ubiquitous. There are very few items one can find in a grocery store that do not contain high fructose corn syrup. Pretty much anything in a bottle or packet has it. Sodas, sports drinks, flavored coffees, cereals, crackers, jams, bread, and yogurt. Almost any food that is processed has high fructose corn syrup in it. Please read the food label on the packet or bottle the next time you are in the grocery store.

Statistics show that the average American consumer eats about 150 pounds of sugar a year, whether it be through high fructose corn syrup, traditional sugar, or artificial sweeteners. Medical and health experts have proven that this inordinate consumption of sugar is the leading cause of obesity, heart disease, and hypertension in the United States.

Tragically, the vestiges of indenture still linger. Tourists flocking to the beach resorts in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, are blissfully ignorant that less an hour away, low wage workers still slave away on sugarcane farms.

Dominican Republic (DR) and Haiti together form the island of Hispaniola. DR grows about 200,000 metric tons of sugar (MT) a year and exports all of it to the US, which consumes 1.2 million MT annually. Each year during the harvesting season, laborers from Haiti, the poorer country between the two, are brought to DR to work on the farms. Their papers are taken away at the border and, like Viriah and his friends on the farm, the Haitian laborers are confined to the farm and the “bateyes,” barracks which resemble concentration camps. Statisticians estimate that one million Haitian workers labor on DR farms working fourteen hour days, seven days a week, and earn less than 1 USD a day.

Rev. Christopher Hartley’s documentary on the sugarcane farms of the Dominican Republic is available on YouTube, and it is a stark reminder of slavery in modern times.

 
The Evolution of Sugar over the Centuries

It is interesting to note that none of the indenture sugarcane countries figure in the top ten sugarcane-producing countries of today.

1. Brazil
2. India
3. China
4. Thailand
5. Pakistan
6. Mexico
7. Columbia
8. Philippines
9. Indonesia
10. United States of America

A curse of the indenture labor? I wonder.

The sugar industry will continue to transform and take on a new life, but sadly the millions of lives that were lost in the fields over the centuries because of slavery and indenture are at risk of being forgotten.