PEACEMEAL - The Sweet and Not-So-Sweet Smell of Sugar Cane Production (Commentary)

The author and cane fields shown in the car window reflection in Hawaiiby Cynthia Thomet for HUMNews

As I was sipping my morning coffee today, I was nudged by a small epiphany that everything we do has the ripple effect that can touch the lives of people halfway around the world. The thought was spawned by the sugar that I stirred into my cup, and it took me through a whirlwind thought of supply-and-demand, island living, field workers in developing countries, dictatorships and revolutions, capitalist greed and living on the earth in a cyclically sustainable manner.

Maybe I was thinking about all these things because I recently finished reading a great book by an amazing Dominican-American author, Junot Diaz called, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." The novel provides a fascinating look into the Dominican Republic under the Trujillo dictatorship (the era ended with Rafael Trujillo’s assassination in 1961) and describes some intense sugar cane scenes where you can practically hear the reeds clacking against each other.

My native island of Trinidad produces (but stopped exporting about two years ago) the white, refined sugar we dissolve into our morning coffee or tea. Sugar’s by-product, molasses, is often used in the fermentation of distilled liquors, such as rum (producing that gold or dark color). Molasses is also sometimes added to pipe tobacco and shishah in the Middle East as a flavoring agent, and it is even used as a nutritional additive. (Believe it or not, molasses is a source of calcium, magnesium, potassium and iron, which is why it is not only used as a source of minerals is human foods, but also for livestock feed.)

The production of sugar is not just an island phenomenon, it is a major money-maker for some of the world’s largest and most-heavily populated countries. In 2008, Brazil, India and China were the top three producers of sugar cane, producing more than a billion metric tons of sugar valued at more than $22 billion. (see chart)

The smell of refining sugar cane is unique and shared by developing countries around the world. Floating over the warm salty breeze from the day, you can detect the smoke. It is a sweet, light smoke that meanders and sticks in your nostrils. Flowing beneath the island breezes are the dark undercurrents of molasses and burnt caramel.

Sugar Fuels Machines and Big Business
Born on a small Caribbean island and having lived on the small Pacific island of Maui (see my commentary on the taro root), where I speak a little of what I learned during my time there, I have come to associate that smell with island life and island living. While the smell of sugar cane production brings sweet memories to me, it probably floats black snow on the backs of those who toil behind the scenes—those who were imported as debt-slaves to work the land.Lahaina Drive is a dirt road through sugar cane fields pointing to the summit of Haleakala. The island of Maui's main volcano.

That island burning smell? The billows of smoke along the horizon? That’s the smell of big money—much bigger than the cash made on the world food market. The non-culinary potential of sugar cane is almost more fascinating. Because molasses can be fermented to produce ethanol, which can power motor vehicles, the business potential for growing sugar cane just got sweeter. (Imagine no more deep drilling to get to crude oil.)

Unfortunately, with heightened capital opportunity comes increased opportunism, accompanied by human rights abuses. Many of these countries continue to struggle with human rights issues, including debt-slavery among agrarian workers, child labor, and even the eviction of Cambodian landowners to make way for foreign-owned sugar plantations seeing big money in biofuels.

My thoughts drifted this morning to the field hands who would work alongside Maui’s Pu`unene highway. I don’t know if they were subject to human rights abuses, but I do hope that their hand in helping produce biofuels translated to lower energy costs in their homes—or some other direct benefit to them and their families.

Next time you sprinkle granulated sugar on your funnel cake, just think that there’s more than sweetness in that carnival bite, there’s history, national identity, whole industries and nations fueled by the humble stalks that clack-clack in the island breezes.

 
--- The author is Cynthia Thomet, a humanitarian, and co owner and doyenne of the award winning downtown Atlanta, Georgia; US restaurant, Lunacy Black Market. You can find Cynthia's own blog here:http://thoughtfulcyn.wordpress.com/.   Her columns for HUMNEWS search for the intersection between food and humanity, and how meals unite us.