THE HERB TRAVELER – Sugarland, Clewiston Florida
herbsdottir on the go

It was an early morning wakeup call. The ‘Sugarland Tour’ at 9:00 am was an almost two-hour drive -- 98 miles to U.S. Sugar in Clewiston Florida. 

Anyone who loves to explore periodically gets a ‘bug in one’s ear’ to wander off the beaten path in order to experience something new. Well, that’s me! 

So, what was it this time? Raisin’ Cane or getting an up-close look at how cane sugar is: grown, harvested, and processed before it appears on grocery shelves.

Sugarcane yields the highest number of calories of any plant per unit area of cultivation! 

Sugarcane (Saccharum officinale) of the grass family (Poaceae).  

Sixty percent of the world’s production of table sugar (sucrose) comes from sugarcane.  Beet sugar is second. Known since antiquity, this wild grass (Saccharum officinale) is thought to have originated in Borneo and New Guinea. There, perhaps eight thousand years ago, one enjoyed the taste of sugar while chewing on the stems.  Persians, Arabs and Crusaders helped to spread this sweetest of stalks all over the world.  The campaigns of Alexander the Great brought sugarcane to the Mediterranean and then Arab traders expanded the reach. The Crusaders took sugarcane to Europe, where it was long utilized in medicine. The species designation officinale recalls the use of apothecary sugar.

Note: Grasses appeared on Earth about 55 million years ago (rice, wheat, corn, rye, oats) making possible the migration of early peoples. 

Before sugarcane, honey was used as a sweetener. Approximately 1000 BCE sugarcane crops spread through the Philippines, Indonesia, China and India.  The Hindus were the first to crush the stems and evaporate the juice. They called this substance sarkara. The word sugar has evolved from that name. Columbus brought sugarcane culture to the West Indies. Surprisingly, it was one of the first ‘cash’ crops in southern Colonial America.  Planting and harvesting was done by hand utilizing slave labor.

The Sugarland Tour

The morning tour began in the Clewiston Chamber of Commerce that also serves as a Museum of central Florida’s prehistoric past (for another time!).  Twenty of us (including farmers from many parts of the U.S.) piled into a small van.  Bobby, probably the most well-informed tour guide on everything sugarcane, is our guide. I should mention at the outset, that this was mostly a bus tour with only a few body-stretching stops.  The van headed down a bumpy, unpaved road bordering a canal to enter the cane fields. 

The van stopped and everyone jumped out to view the environs while our guide chopped and sliced pieces of cane for each to chew. Yummy! 

Back in the van, lumbering down the road, we observed U.S. Sugar’s modern, mechanized harvesting techniques. The workers stay connected thru a vast wireless network covering 270 square miles! The automated radio frequency system coordinates the timing of harvesting operations with the Company’s private railroad transportation, milling and refining facilities. The automated Clewiston Refinery is considered one of the largest, most efficient, cost effective sugar mills in the world. It is capable of processing 42,000 tons of sugarcane a day and generating 800,000 tons of refined sugar each year.

This crop is well suited to Everglades agriculture with ample: warmth, sunshine, rainfall and mucky soil. The crop has a 9-12 month growing cycle, and a high tolerance to fluctuating water levels.  The stalk is made up of more than 70% water, but the rest is sugar and fiber. Cane is now an environmentally friendly crop, requiring minimal fertilizers or pesticides.

We remained in the van to drive through a storehouse of mountains of yet unrefined sugar (similar to the mountains of sand we can see on the sides of highways in the winter here in the Northeast). There were no critters with a sweet tooth to be seen!

U.S. Sugar Corp. is committed to clean, renewable energy. They use bagasse - the fibrous material leftover after the sugarcane stalks are crushed for juice – to create a clean-burning biofuel that powers the refinery operations. Every ton of the recycled bagasse can produce the same amount of energy as 50 gallons of fuel oil.

Lastly, we were treated to a stop at scenic Lake Okeechobee, the second largest lake in the continental U.S. It was a very informative tour (bit long for comfort – 3 ½ hours). However, one will never again be able to approach sugar in the marketplace without thinking of the farm to table process!