Sugar Cane

Sugar cane grows throughout the area we have been traveling for the last 2 months.

Its  cultivation requires a tropical or temperate climate, with a minimum of 24 inches of rain a year.

Sugarcane is harvested by hand and mechanically.  In hand harvesting usually the field is first set on fire. The fire burns dry leaves, and kills any lurking  snakes, without harming the stalks and roots.

It is amazing what one man and a machete can accomplish.

Just as on our family farms before so many of them became owned by corporations, the young learn the family trade early.

Trucks piled high with a commodity to be traded at the Chicago Exchange. Which by the way is doing quite well as of this posting.

A Government controlled Pemex fuel station services one and all.  From tourists and travelers like us to the Cane Truck.

At the Refineries there are always  long lineswaiting to get  the load processed.  These truck drivers come from all over to work the circuit.  Sleeping and existing in their trucks.  As a side note, when we traveled in North Eastern Australia we observed the sugar cane  being transported from the field to the refinery by narrow gage railroad.

It may take days to unload a drivers truck and release him to go back to the fields and start the process over again.


Some of these pictures were taken in Mexico and some in Belize.  In Belize we were quite near the 1st stage refinery.  The air was sweet like the smell of  sugar being cooked with butter to make a Carmel topping.  The final refining stage is usually done in the country it is exported to. There it is turned into refined white sugar or brown sugar or what ever.