Howdy-
This week’s crop is sugarcane, a plant that is sporadically and sparsely sprinkled across the farm. Although the plant is quite unassuming looking: tall, brown, reed-like and fruitless, both its history and its contemporary presence in the Americas are grim.
Unlike the last two crops we looked at, which were native to the continent of Africa, sugar is native to Oceania, specifically the island of New Guinea. The crop then made its way to India, where Greeks and Romans found out about the sweet plant. Soon, scholars from around the world were talking about sugar as a medicinal plant or a spice and developing more methods for processing the plant. Then, Arab people began to promote the plant as a delicacy for the rich and royal. European/Christian crusaders found out about sugar while massacring Muslims and Jews during the Siege of Jerusalem and then finally, Columbus brought the plant to the Americas along with genocide and colonization.
It is crucial to note that until sugar was brought to the Americas, it was considered a spice, something medicinal or something reserved for the elites. This is because it is an extremely labor-intensive crop to cultivate. It was only with the onset of transatlantic slavery that sugarcane began to be produced in bulk; in just the 17th century, more than half a million African people were brought to the Americas (specifically Brazil, the Caribbean and Louisiana) to be enslaved on sugar plantations.
If the horrendous work of producing sugar had not been forced on enslaved African people, it seems unlikely that sugar would be as huge a part of our economy and diet as it is. That being said, sugar beets make up the majority of sugar production in the United States, nowadays.
We know that sugar is extremely detrimental to consume in large quantities, yet it is still highly subsidized by our government. Further, the diseases that sugar can lead to, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, disproportionately affect Black people in the United States. This disparity has to do with food injustice and food apartheid, which are subjects that I will write more about another week!
Hope everyone is staying masked and ignoring the 4th of July!
Isa