Sugarcane: The Sweet And The Bitter

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                    Sugarcane: The Sweet And The Bitter

If you ask anyone who lives in sugarcane-producing areas about the inconveniences resulting from cane-harvesting operations, they will likely point out a few areas of irritation, including:

  • If the cane fields are burned prior to harvesting, the ashes are carried by the wind and fall on everything and everyone.  All around the Caribbean, Central and South America, I’ve heard the complaints by angry housewives, griping about the clean laundry that was put outside to dry, only to find it covered in ash later in the day!
  • To keep dust levels down during the harvest/dry season, dirt roads in and around the communities near the sugar mills and the distilleries are often sprayed with spent wash (vinasse).  While this approach does help reduce some of the dust, the smell is less than appealing, and it attracts A LOT of flies!
  • The number of trucks hauling harvested sugarcane from the fields to the mills compound traffic congestion and are often involved in accidents.

What most citizens don’t usually consider, is that the same crop responsible for all those problems is also behind the employment of many individuals who rely on the sugarcane income to support their families.  Sugarcane is also responsible for a large volume of sugar exports, which help subsidize the price of the sugar sold domestically.

The focus of this month’s “Sweet Business of Sugar” is on Nicaragua (pg. 44).  As you will see when you read the report, some sugar mills have lost up to 30% of their workforce, including experienced truck drivers, due to the mass exodus of professionals leaving the country to escape the current political and economic crisis.  

This exodus is bad news but is even worse when you think about all the electric energy that countries like Nicaragua produce using the bagasse after the cane is crushed at the mills.  Electricity prices invariably go up when supply falls short of demand, so it is easy to see the domino effect that worker migration can have on the cost of living in sugarcane-producing regions.

As with all things in life, welcoming the sweet side of things means that we must also accept their bitter side.

Cheers!

Luis Ayala,

Editor and Publisher        

http://www.linkedin.com/in/rumconsultant