A bamboo like plant which sugar, rum and molasses is its by-product
Young Cane in the Field
The Sugar cane plant was the main crop produced on the numerous plantations throughout the Caribbean through the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, as almost every island was covered with sugar plantations for refining the cane for its sweet properties. The main source of labor was African slaves. These plantations produced 80-90 percent of the sugar consumed in Western Europe. In the 1800s sugar dominated Martinique, Grenada, Saint Croix, Jamaica, Barbados, Leeward Islands, Saint Domingue, Cuba and many other islands that were run by the French or British.
Mature Cane
On the British islands, sugar was the only crop grown, and on the French islands, sugar was their most important crop. The sugar was best grown on land that was near the coast where the soil was naturally yellow and fertile.
Cane at the Market
In the mid 1600s sugar cane was brought into British West Indies by Dutch-Jews in exile, from Brazil. Upon landing in Barbados and other islands, they quickly urged local farmers to change their main crops from cotton and tobacco to sugar cane. With depressed prices of cotton and tobacco due mainly to stiff competition from the North American colonies, the local farmers switched, in which case leading to a boom in the Caribbean economies. Sugar was quickly snapped up by the British which used the sugar for cakes, and sweetener in teas.
Mature or Ripe Sugar Cane
For about the next 100 years Barbados remained the richest of all the European colonies in the Caribbean region. The prosperity in the colony of Barbados remained regionally unmatched until sugar cane production grew larger in geographically larger countries such as Haiti, Jamaica and elsewhere. As part of the mass sugar production, the process gave rise to other related commodities like rum, molasses.
Cane Strip of Peel
Sugarcane juice is a type of drink commonly found in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Latin America, and also in other countries where sugarcane is grown commercially.
