Sugarcane industry

“ The economy is based on sugar, manufacturing (mainly textiles) , and tourism. Despite significant expansion in other sectors over the past decade, sugarcane remains dominant and is grown on about 90% of the cultivated land area, accounting for 40% of export earnings. ”

“ The general statement regarding the danger of depending on a single industry applies with very special force to the dependence of the West Indian Colonies upon the sugar industry, for the cultivation of sugar collects together a larger number of people upon the land than can be employed or supported in the same area by any other form of cultivation. In addition to this it also unfits the people, or at any rate gives them no training, for the management or cultivation of the soil for any other purpose than that of growing sugar-cane. ”

“ People who are to be believed tell me that the percentage of juice extracted from the cane is 50 per cent. below that attainable with modern machinery in many parts of the West Indies. It is obvious that until up-to-date appliances are substituted for the crude and obsolete methods of manufacture, the sugar industry has no prosperous outlook before it, nor can it hope to compete with beet sugar. ”

“ The growers' only competitive outlet is the one which exists when the refiners compete among themselves. There is no other market. The farmers' only alternative to dealing with one of the three refiners is to stop growing beets. They can neither plant nor sell except at the refiners' pleasure and on their terms. The refiners thus effectively control the quantity of beets grown, harvested and marketed, and consequently of sugar sold from the area in interstate commerce, even when they compete with each other. They dominate the entire industry. ”

“ Mosquitos were unknown in the group before 1826, when a Mexican whaling ship, it is said, started a "colony."
Sugar-cane growing is the most prosperous industry here, notwithstanding that it requires more care, cultivation and expense than in other countries. Irrigation and fertilization are necessary to insure crops in some parts of the group. All the soil is of volcanic origin.
The wages paid sugar plantation workers are from $18 to $26 a month, with free house rent, cooking fuel, and medical attendance. In addition to wages, a bonus is given to workers who remain to the end of the season. ”

“ It follows that mill owners must control, in one way or another, land enough to produce cane sufficient to keep their mills in profitable operation. As we have seen advantage has been taken of this fact by unscrupulous sugar men in the United States who have secured legislation limiting the amount of land which corporations authorized to engage in agriculture may own, with the deliberate intention of thus crippling the sugar industry in the Philippine Islands. ”

“ The departments of Escuintla, Amatitlan, and Baja Verapaz are the districts in which the largest areas are under cultivation. As a rule the small sugar mills are crude and modern machinery has not been introduced to a great extent, although the largest plantations are already supplied with the latest improvements. With the introduction on a larger scale of modern machinery and the latest processes the sugar industry would be certain to afford satisfactory profits. ”

“ When I landed on the shores of Liberia, eight years ago, not a pound of sugar was exported from the land; I doubt whether as much as a pound was then made for home consumption. But, sir, since those days life, and energy, and power have been thrown into this branch of industry. The forest has been levelled; broad fields have been cleared; and hundreds of acres of sugar-cane have been planted, cut down, manufactured into sugar, and replanted again, and again, and again. Taking the Republic in the aggregate, we have between five and six hundred acres of land appropriated to the growth of cane. ”

“ The Royal Commission reported last year that the sugar industry was threatened by such reduction in the immediate future 'as may not in some of the Colonies differ from extinction.' The result has been that whereas formerly three-fourths of the exports were the products of the sugar-cane, there is now want of employment, reduction in the rate of wages and in the standard of living, and consequent inability to meet expenditure. ”

“ The work of manufacture is carried out under scientific supervision, and state sugar experimental stations test the various species of cane, and determine which are most productive, and most immune from disease. Thus the Queensland Sugar Industry is specially interesting, because it has solved the problem of carrying on a tropical manufacture with white labour.
The Moreton Central Sugar Mill, which we visited, is close to the main line of railway, but light railways run in all directions through the district to bring the canes up on trucks to the mill. ”

“ The land has become exhausted, and will no longer bear two crops, the cattle have died, and the fever-stricken population can no longer labour as they were wont. The decrease is most marked, however, in sugarcane, which has fallen from 41,000 to 15,000 acres. Sugarcane in Kheri is principally grown in Muhamdi, Haidara bad, the northern part of Paila, and Kheri parganas. In the last three defective drain- age and heavy rains often seriously injure the crop.. The edible sugarcane is not grown, except in the gardens of the wealthy. ”

“ The capacity of the mill is 1000 tons of cane per day, which means about 125 tons of centrifugal sugar. It was completed at the end of 1913 at a cost of about one million dollars, and the first cane ground was from the 1914 crop.
In the Philippines cane is not planted every year. Herbert S. Walker, in his work “The Sugar Industry in the Island of Negros” (Manila, 1910) , says: “A decidedly large proportion of the total land under cultivation in Negros is not replanted every year, but is allowed to ratoon, from two to eight crops being taken off without replanting. ”

“ It is sufficient to cut down and burn the brush and scratch the soil and sow with any seed, to recover returns of a hundred for one. Sugarcane, vines, maize, cocoa, coffee, and a host of products can be raised. The sugarcane, once planted, yields perpetual, some existing plantations being more than a hundred years old. ”

“ At an earlier date the unsettled political conditions and the uncertainty of the continued favor of the United States discouraged the investment of capital. Thus far, sugar-cane is the only plant extensively raised. The sugar industry dominates the entire industrial life of the islands. Over half the population is engaged in the industry in some capacity. Any cause that lowers the price of sugar injuriously affects the general prosperity. Sugar-cane has long been grown on the islands of Hawaii, Maui, Kauai, and Oahu, and has recently been introduced on Molokai and Lanai. ”

“ French colonists running away from their infuriated slaves in Haiti brought with them the succulent cane, and at the same time a certain love of comfort and various agricultural hints which may still be traced on some of the older estates. But the industry has been modernized now to the point where science and large capital completely control its methods and its output. The saying is that wherever the royal palm grows sugar-cane will flourish, while the prevalence of guinea-grass is also considered a favorable sign. ”

“ By degrees, however, the culture of the cane fell, into decay, whether through disease of the plant or its cheaper production in the Brazils and West Indies is not known, so that in the year 1840, only two sugar factories were at work in the whole island; and even these only produce molasses and rum, of which the latter, in the year 1856, amounted to 1500 pipes. The cultivation of the sugar-cane, however, has increased since the vine disease has fallen so heavily on the landowner. ”

“ In 1906 the area under cultivation in Jamaica was 750,000 acres and of this only 26,000 were devoted to cane. Sugar planting has been in a stagnant condition for years and only a limited number of the estates that still carry on the industry are making money. Many have stopped growing cane entirely and have turned to bananas, cocoanuts, coffee or cattle raising. In certain districts there is plenty of fertile alluvial land, ample water and cheap labor, but proper cultivation is lacking, so that the results are far from what they should be. ”

“ To these objects of commerce may be added, the now important article of sugar, which might be raised to a great amount, in various districts of Africa, as the climate is propitious to the growth of the sugarcane, which, under proper cultivation, might be raised in great perfection.
The lands upon the banks of the Gambia, the Rio Noonez, the Rio Grande, the Rio Pongo, in the Mandingo country, Sierra Leone, Sherbro, &c. are universally allowed to be extremely fertile in many places, and abundant in vegetation and population. ”

“ The areas available for cane cultivation are still enormous, and, though hesitancy and doubt may for a 142 time join hands in checking expansion, the main facts remain that there is room for the people and that there is a demand for the product. Australia, in her fiscal policy, has recognised that the sugar industry is a national industry, and our statesmen realise that it is doing for the Australian tropics what no other industry on the coastal lands has yet seriously attempted—what, indeed, no other country in the world is as yet prepared to try. ”

“ The home-worker has lost his land as well as been ruined in his industry by the competition of the modern factory. At Tucumán, on the contrary, the sugar industry never passed through the stage of domestic production. It was set up in full development, some devoting their capital to building works, others to growing the cane. Irrigation seemed from the first to dictate a concentration of ownership; the refineries at Cruz Alta constructed costly special canals to bring the water of the Sali. ”

“ There is no such handicapping of rural industry now enforced, and sugar and tobacco, which are always sure of a ready market where transportation is to be had, are engaging more and more of the attention of planters. It was found that the best of sugar-cane land, that is, best suited for a sugar plantation, could be had here for from thirty to forty dollars per acre; superior for the purpose to that which is held at one thousand dollars per acre in Louisiana. Though cotton is grown in about half the states of Mexico, the states of Vera Cruz and Durango are the most prolific in this crop. ”

“ All castes plant sugarcane, turmeric, and opium, although potatoes, tobacco, ginger, ghuiyán (arum) , shakarqand (sweet potatoes) are only grown, as a rule, by Kachhis and Muráos. "The sugar mills are always of wood. The ordinary succession is sugarcane, then wheat or gram, then barley. The produce is sold in the form of gur, or coarse brown sugar, to merchants from Shábjahánpur who make advances to the cultivators. An average crop is 1,100 lbs. per acre, and the price is about 30 tbs. for a rupee. The bye products, the crushed stalks, are in- valuable as food for cattle. ”

“ All agricultural centers are subject to crises more or less serious in character, and, as has just been shown, Mauritius is no exception to the rule. Depressions resulting from crop shortages, however, should not be confounded with the general troubles that have seriously menaced the cane-sugar industry during the last half century, almost all of which are attributable to the competition of the beet. ”

“ There was a time when many fields were planted with sugar-cane; there were many little local mills where the cane was crushed and molasses and sugar made; to-day it may be said that there is no cane industry in the Republic. Has the demand for sugar ceased? Has the soil lost the capacity of growing cane? Is not the decline in this industry due to time-losing, crude, and imperfect methods of production? Liberia seems well adapted to various domestic animals. ”

“ The volcanic soils are the very best sugar-lands, and a large amount of capital is invested in this industry. The sugar-plantations employ more than forty thousand laborers, all Japanese, Chinese, and Porto Ricans. The value of the sugar export is nearly twenty-five million dollars yearly; that of fruit, rice, and hides is about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Coffee is rapidly becoming a leading product. The bulk of the imports comes from the United States, and consists of clothing, cotton textiles, lumber, and machinery. ”

“ The sugar-cane allows of no shade. Therefore the groves and avenues must fall. To make its culture profitable, it must be raised in the largest possible quantities that the extent of land will permit. To attempt the raising of fruit, or of the ornamental woods, is bad economy for the sugar planter. Most of the fruits, especially the orange, which is the chief export, ripen in the midst of the sugar season, and no hands can be spared to attend to them. The sugar planter often buys the fruits he needs for daily use and for making preserves, from the neighboring cafetals. ”

“ The writer is sometimes asked by managers of small factories, turning out plantation yellow clarified sugars, if it would not pay them to employ bone-char filters to use in connection with the remainder of their factory, in order to be able to work up an industry with the low-grade open-kettle sugars, during the intercampaign. Most assuredly such a combination of small plantation factory and refinery would not be a paying affair. It takes men of experience and special training to carry out successfully the more detailed work in any technical line. ”

“ He always found the cultivation in sugar-cane villages to be extremely careful and laborious. Ancient stone mills are sometimes found in black soil country, and it is difficult to understand how sugarcane can ever have been grown there. The author was mistaken in supposing that the indigenous pattern of mill is superior to a good roller mill. The indigenous mill has been completely superseded in most parts of the Panjāb, United Provinces, and Bihār, by the roller mill patented by Messrs. ”