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Articles on sugar cane

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By reflecting on sugar’s origins, we can trace the pathways that have made this commodity so abundant. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

Uncovering the violent history of the Canadian sugar industry

By reflecting on the violent origins of the Canadian sugar industry, we can bring wider attention to the exploitation underpinning the history of Canadian cuisine.
A Pacific island woman with a child planting sugar cane in a field, Bingara, Queensland, c 1897. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.

Friday essay: ‘I said no’ – Nie’s refusal and the troubling question of Pacific slavery in Australia

In 1881, a Pacific Islander woman brought here to work on a sugar cane plantation ran away. She was violently retrieved by her employer. Her story sheds moving light on a dark history of exploitation.
Co-founders Craig (left) and Marc Kielburger introduce Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau as they appear at the WE Day celebrations in Ottawa in November 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

The other WE Charity scandal: White saviourism

An intense controversy over sending Canadian teens to Cuba to cut sugar cane in the 1970s raises questions about why WE Charity’s international development approach hasn’t been controversial for years.
Phil / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

Ban on toxic mercury looms in sugar cane farming, but Australia still has a way to go

Australia has failed to ratify an international treaty to reduce harmful mercury emissions. Mercury exposure can cause kidney damage and brain impairment, especially in children.
Prison jobs are always low paid, often difficult, and produce many of the foodstuffs and services many Americans use every day. Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

Prisoner strike exposes an age old American reliance on forced labor

Enslaved workers used to grow cotton and mill flour. Now prisoners grind beef and crate eggs. Here, a historian explores Americans’ troubling habit of consuming the products of slave labor.
A medium-size passenger jet burns roughly 750 gallons of fuel per hour. www.shutterstock.com

Jet fuel from sugarcane? It’s not a flight of fancy

Scientists have engineered sugarcane to increase its oil content and are developing renewable jet aircraft fuel from the oil. The engineered sugarcane could become a valuable energy crop.
Nitrogen pollution is one of the factors driving outbreaks of crown-of-thorns - giant starfish that devour the reef. Kenneth Taylor Jr/Flickr

High-tech fertilisers and innovation have to come to the Great Barrier Reef’s rescue

The latest Great Barrier Reef report shows some improvements to water quality over the past five years, but there’s still a lot to do on one particular problem: nitrogen.
Two of millions of cane toads found across northern Australia. Mark Lewis, Radio Pictures, Mullumbimby

Everyone agreed: cane toads would be a winner for Australia

When cane toads were released in Australia in 1935, they were the latest innovation in pest control, backed by a level of consensus support that a scientist could only dream of. So what went wrong? Research…

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