Sugar remains a top American agricultural product three centuries after slavery

Evidence

It is not an overstatement to say that the crop they produced changed the world. Cane stalks still grow at the Whitney Plantation Museum, as they do on nearly every speck of fertile ground as far as the eye can see, a lush green testament to the unquenchable taste for the plant’s sweet juice. The Whitney’s tiny annual crop, which helps pay the museum’s bills, is an infinitesimal portion of U.S. domestic sugar production, which itself is but a portion of a global sugar industry that produces some two hundred million tons per year. The world’s leading sugar producer is Brazil; the United States ranks fifth in global production, with about nine million tons annually. Domestically, the sugar produced from sugarcane and sugar beets remains one of the country’s most important agricultural products. Louisiana’s sugarcane industry is by itself worth $3 billion, generating an estimated 16,400 jobs. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 264