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Stop saying sugar is dead; it is not

Aug 05, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
Editor’s note; This is the final part of the letter that was published in Thursday’s edition.
As in rice where 65 edible by-products can be manufactured from the grains, so in sugar cane both edible and industrial by-products can be garnered from this sugar cane plant. Our nation lacks one word in its consciousness- sustainability, and this is a pivotal concept of development.
The success and fame of Demerara Sugar saw the expansion of sugar production across the globe which in Guyana’s case resulted in the creation of a multi-ethnic entity, the result of the British Slavers having to find replacements for the  enslaved who originally laboured in the cane fields. This was the beginning of the social formation that is now known as Guyana. Simply put, sugar brought us all here; we may as well appreciate that fact.
Sugar crystals- the end product of agro industrial processing – is but one part of the chain of products from the sugar cane plant; cane juice, molasses, alcohol in the main. The sugar industry is more than production of edible crystal sweetener. Brazilian ethanol has proven that the sugarcane industry can be profitable and functional economically.
The point to this somewhat long winded exposition is ‘King Sugar’ in a Guyanese context reverberates as part of our local history and is fundamentally tied to the industrial revolution that allowed European civilization to spread globally. The politics in our country have been and still are strongly influenced by the socio-political matrix that evolved to facilitate the industry.
From the industrial/commercial viewpoint and the cultural/political sphere, there exists a contestable argument for the prolongation of the life of ‘King Sugar’.
Sugar cane crystals are the end product of an industrial process that can be stopped at various points depending on the desired products- cane juice, molasses of differing viscosity and chemical makeup, dark sugar and refined sugar crystals.
In the process of arriving at crystals from cane, there are by- products from sugarcane leaves, through to bagasse in the pre and post processing stages. It is highly technological which would not have been conceived by the early planters/industrialists. Every part of the sugar cane processing activity is of great value in their own right. The fibers of the sugarcane leaf are formidable as anyone knows who has been cut by the leaves. The skin of the cane is clearly related to the sturdy bamboo and the bagasse- a web of tissue that has unexplored possibility of being a fabric on its own or as a subset to more complex material structure. We burn the bagasse to produce electricity, or just burn it to be rid of this by-product of King Sugar.
Ethanol produced in vast quantities in Brazil is the most well known use of sugar cane product outside of the sugar crystal. King Sugar in Guyana is so named not only because of the economic benefits that accrued from the plantation system but is also based on the reality that sugarcane planting, processing, storage, transport and marketing is a product/industry to the very nature of Guyanese culture. As an industry, it is a mosaic of activities that create a national/cultural network that involves all economic classes/races in a socio-political matrix that were the bases for the creation of the colony of Guyana in the mid nineteen century, which in turn, has evolved into the Guyana state of the 20th and 21st Century.
The future of sugar is equitable diversification. Ideas for regulated diversification have been discussed in the news media.  Our policy makers have to listen to the views of all Guyanese, since sugar is we own. The Chinese Author Yang Liguang said; “Only by peering through the darkness of history can one sincerely cherish the brightness of today’s sunshine, and confidently look to the future”
Hafiz Rahman

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