Sugar plantations (2024)

FAQs

What did sugar plantations do? ›

They sowed, tended and harvested the crop, and then worked to extract the juice from the sugar cane and boil and process the juice in order to turn it into sugar and molasses, and later they might work to distil some of the waste products into rum.

In 16th century Jamaica, 60% of enslaved people were sent to work on sugar plantations, and by the 19th century, that number swelled to 90%. Sugar work was brutal on the human body. The average lifespan of an enslaved sugar plantation worker was only 7-9 years after arrival in the Americas.

Sugar quickly turned into a big business and generated rapid population growth in the islands with 337,000 people immigrating over the span of a century. The sugar grown and processed in Hawaiʻi was shipped primarily to the United States and, in smaller quantities, globally.

Plantation white, or mill white, sugar is a white sugar commonly produced for local consumption in sugarcane-growing countries. It is produced at the factory without remelting and refining of the raw sugar. Instead, sulfur dioxide gas (produced by burning sulfur in air)…

Sugarcane production often pollutes freshwater ecosystems with silt and fertilizers washed from farms, as well as plant matter and chemical sludge from mills. In the Great Barrier Reef and Mesoamerican Reef, those contaminants are flowing out to sea and damaging coral ecosystems.

Slaves toiled in the fields and the boiling houses, supplying the huge amounts of labor that sugar required. Overall some four million slaves were brought to the Caribbean, and almost all ended up on the sugar plantations.

Enslaved people were granted time off to celebrate religious holidays as well, the longest being the three to four days off given for Christmas. Other religious holidays that provided days off were Easter and Whitsunday, also known as Pentecost.

Temple slavery, state slavery, and military slavery were relatively rare and distinct from domestic slavery, but in a very broad outline they can be categorized as the household slaves of a temple or the state. The other major type of slavery was productive slavery.

Although some planters manumitted elderly slaves who could no longer work, most elderly slaves remained on plantations with their families, and their masters were expected to provide for them until they died.

HC&S – Hawaii's Last Working Sugar Plantation

After roughly 18 months of growth, the fields are dried out and ripened prior to harvest, generally over a four to six month period. The company burns this crop in 60 to 100 acre increments during the harvest to make it cheaper to transport and easier to process.

Why did Hawaii stop growing pineapples? ›

Hawaii pineapple production declined in the 1980s as Dole and Del Monte relocated much of their acreage elsewhere in the world, primarily due to high U.S. labor and land costs.

The very end of the sugar industry in the area came after the tsunami in 1946. The wave effectively destroyed the railroad and marked the end of the industry. Once used for sugarcane production, the land is now utilized by other agricultural products, such as macadamia nuts and tropical flowers.

Sugarcane. In the 2020s, sugarcane is grown commercially in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. Florida's sugarcane production expanded significantly since the United States ceased importing sugar from Cuba in 1960.

There was a complex division of labor needed to operate a sugar plantation. Sugarcane field workers worked long hours planting, maintaining, and harvesting the sugarcane under hot and dangerous tropical conditions.

No. Although the terms are often colloquially used interchangeably, they are not the same. Powdered sugar is similar to confectioners' sugar but without the cornstarch. Because the words are often mistaken for each other, you will even find "powdered sugar" in the grocery store that is actually confectioners' sugar.

From a humble beginning as a sweet treat grown in gardens, sugar cane cultivation became an economic powerhouse, and the growing demand for sugar stimulated the colonization of the New World by European powers, brought slavery to the forefront, and fostered brutal revolutions and wars.

Besides planting and harvesting, there were numerous other types of labor required on plantations and farms. Enslaved people had to clear new land, dig ditches, cut and haul wood, slaughter livestock, and make repairs to buildings and tools.

Sugar drove the expansion of European empires in the Atlantic world. From its cultivation in the Atlantic Islands in the 15th century to its production in Cuba and Louisiana after British and French emancipation in the 19th century, sugar was always the dominant crop in the Atlantic.

Embraced by the British populace, sugar provided an impetus for colonization and required imported African labor. Sugar and a newfound consumerism at home drove the British Atlantic World. A fondness for sweetness transcends all cultural boundaries.