Sugar cane, Saccharum officinarum

Sugar cane was the basis for sugar production for many millennia until sugar beet emerged as a competitor around 200 years ago. While sugar was initially rare and expensive, it later became one of the first industrially produced global commodities – and thus a driver of wars, colonial slavery and speculation throughout the centuries.

The plant with requirements

Sugar cane belongs to the sweet grass family, is perennial and can grow up to seven meters high. The herbaceous plant can be confused with flowering maize plants due to the size of its leaves and the tufted inflorescences. The inside of the long, up to 5 cm thick stalks consists of 9-16 percent crystallisable sugar.

The plant is considered to be very sensitive, as constant warmth of 25 to 28 degrees Celsius and nitrogen-rich, deep soil are ideal for its growth. It stops growing at temperatures below 15 degrees Celsius. The soil must be irrigated very specifically during growth and kept dry before harvesting. Sugar cane is therefore only grown in tropical and subtropical regions.

The harvest time depends on the sugar content of the plant after a care-intensive growth period of 10 to 24 months. For the harvest, the sugar-containing stalks are cut off close to the ground and all the leaves are removed, as these do not contain any sugar. In the countries of the Global South, this step is usually carried out by laborious, underpaid manual labour. This is followed by various grinding, cooking and cleaning processes. The sections of stalk left behind in the soil sprout again without much care needed and are ready for the next harvest after 10 to 12 months. The lifespan of a sugar cane plant varies from region to region. In India, for example, sugar cane is often grown for two years and in Brazil it is sometimes grown for five years. A sugar cane plant can live for up to twenty years.

Cruel sweetness – the history of sugar cane

The origin of the plant and its use for sugar production is believed to be East Asia. It is believed to have been eaten raw on the Melanesian islands 10,000 years ago. From there, sugar cane spread throughout Asia – from the Philippines to India. Many thousands of years later, from the sixth century A.D., it reached the Persian and Arabic regions and as far as Spain, Egypt and Sicily through trade.

The plant only arrived in Central Europe over a thousand years later as a result of the European Christian crusades. However, sugar cane could not be cultivated in Central Europe due to the climate. Nevertheless, the Arab sugar cane cultivation areas in the Mediterranean region were taken over by Christians during the crusades. The sugar produced slowly became an alternative to honey, but initially remained very expensive and therefore reserved for the upper classes. Until the discovery of sugar from sugar beet in 1796, sugar cane was the only known source of sugar.

Christopher Columbus brought sugar cane plants to the Caribbean, which became a sugar cane stronghold in the 16th century. Around the same time, Portuguese colonialists introduced it to the West African region. It soon became clear that the warm, humid, tropical climate conditions were ideal for cultivation and good yields. Within a short space of time, large plantations were established in the colonised areas for which numerous indigenous people were forcibly expelled from their land. West African slaves mostly worked on these plantations. In addition to the cultivation of cotton and tobacco, the cultivation of sugar cane also played an important role in the cruel transatlantic slave trade. Sugar production was also hard work and the ‘wear and tear’ on the workforce required a constant supply of mainly young, male slaves.

At the beginning of the 18th century, French colonialists brought sugar cane cultivation to the south of what is now the USA, where it quickly became an important economic factor due to the exploitation of slaves. It was not until the middle of the 19th century that parts of sugar production were mechanised, which reduced the need for labour, enabled the development of larger cultivation areas and increased yields. However, sugar remained an absolute luxury for a long time. Today, sugar cane is the world’s most important plant for the production of sugar and is cultivated on a large scale in almost all warm and humid regions of the world. The work on the plantations is still very hard and dangerous for people and nature, especially due to the use of pesticides. In Brazil, small farmers are losing their land to plantation owners and areas of rainforest continue to be cleared and water bodies polluted.

According to the FAO, almost 2 billion tonnes of cane sugar and more than 260 million tonnes of sugar beet were produced worldwide in the 2022 marketing year. This means that around 80% of global sugar production is based on sugar cane. Production is led by Brazil, India and China, with a yield of just over 70 tons per year and hectare. Today, cane and beet sugar are produced using a very high level of machine-based energy instead of slave-driven muscle power.

Not healthy but often used – use of sugar cane

Sugar cane has a high proportion of sucrose and a low proportion of dextrose (glucose) and fructose (fruit sugar) and is therefore referred to as a disaccharide. The juice of the sugar cane is extracted by pressing and then purified, heated and thickened. The yellow-brown cane sugar obtained is processed into white sugar by refining. Around 1000 kilograms of sugar cane can be used to produce around 100 kilograms of sugar.

100 grams of sugar contain 388 kilocalories and consist of 94.5 percent carbohydrates, whereby whole cane sugar, which is not refined, still contains less than 1 percent minerals. Contrary to what the sugar industry claims, eating too much refined sugar is harmful to health, whereas natural sugar, such as that found in fruit, vegetables or whole foods, is important and healthy. As well as being used in sweets, there is also a lot of added sugar in processed foods such as ketchup, ready-made sauces, frozen pizzas, fruit yogurts, etc. This means that the sugar limit is often exceeded unnoticed – without any soft drinks, ice cream or chocolate. As a result, the risk of developing obesity, fatty liver, diabetes and, indirectly, various types of cancer increases. Dental caries is also promoted by sugar consumption.

Sugar cane in tanks and in industry

Sugar cane not only sweetens our food, but is also processed into bioethanol. Two crops are central to global bioethanol production: corn and sugar cane. Since the 1980s, global ethanol production has increased enormously and inexorably. Brazil and the USA are the two largest producers – in the USA mainly based on corn, in Brazil sugar cane dominates.

The sugar-containing pith in the stalk of the plant is required for the production of ethanol. The sugar cane is broken open and the juice extracted. This juice is then placed in a fermenter, where the sugar it contains is processed into ethanol with the help of yeast fungi. After distillation and dehydration, the end product remains: bioethanol. A by-product is the bagasse, the fibrous remains of the sugar cane. These can be used as fuel. In Brazil, it now accounts for as much as 8 percent of electricity generation.

Bagasse is also increasingly being used as a renewable raw material for the production of degradable plastics (bioplastics), for paper and cardboard production, for compostable disposable tableware, as a material for furniture, doors and in car manufacturing.

Increasing ethanol production has led to an expansion of sugar cane cultivation areas in Brazil. Pasture land is often converted into arable land. In addition to the huge areas of soy, ever larger sugar cane plantations are also being created. However, while refined sugar is traded globally, no international market has yet developed for ethanol. However, the EU-Mercusor trade agreement could give a further boost to bioethanol production and exports from Brazil: The EU is to be able to import 450,000 tons of ethanol duty-free, for chemical purposes, as well as 200,000 tons with a very low duty from the Mercosur states, which corresponds to around 50 percent of current total exports.

Sources

Sodi e.V.: history of Food – Research report on sugar cane. Link.
Research and Documentation Center Chile-Latin America e. V.: Sugar dreams. Ethanol from Brazil in global climate policy. Link.
Grafs Bio Seiten: Bioethanol from sugar cane. Link.