Sugarcane

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PHILIPPINES SAIJIKI

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Sugarcane

***** Location: Philippines, others see below
***** Season: Various, see below
***** Category: Plant

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Explanation



Sugarcane or Sugar cane (Saccharum) is a genus of 6 to 37 species (depending on taxonomic interpretation) of tall perennial grasses (family Poaceae, tribe Andropogoneae), native to warm temperate to tropical regions of the Old World. They have stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in sugar and measure 2 to 6 meters tall. All of the sugarcane species interbreed, and the major commercial cultivars are complex hybrids.
©　More in the WIKIPEDIA !

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The Checkered Origins of the Sugar Industry

The history of sugar production is intricately linked to the evolution of two rather unsavory reflections of man's inhumanity to man, those being colonialism and slavery. Early European settlers in the Caribbean soon began planting sugar cane and building sugar mills to process the output. Sugar cane is a delicate plant, and there was always a need for plenty of fertilizer, irrigation, and a workforce that would work long hard hours of backbreaking labor without complaint - or without choice, as in the case of slaves. The colonialists brought almost 12 million West Africans to the Caribbean in chains in the holds of slave ships during the four and half centuries between 1450 and 1900.

The early sugar business was defined by the notorious "triangular trade." Sugar from the Caribbean was taken to England for refining and rum production. Cloth, firearms, and rum were in turn shipped down to West Africa as capital for the slave trade. The slave ships then took their degraded human cargo to places like Haiti and Barbados to exchange them for yet more sugar.


The Case of Negros Occidental

Although there was never a slave trade in the Philippines, the sugar industry here has its own unique history of exploitation, excitement, and human drama. Nowhere is that story better illustrated than in the province of Negros Occidental, located between Panay and Cebu in the Visayas.

The Spanish crews who first surveyed the island coined the term Negros Occidental because of the dark-skinned people they saw. The ethnic mix changed substantially in the intervening centuries as a result of the complex intermarriage among natives, Spanish, and Chinese. Indeed, Negrenses are known for their fair skin and mestizo traditions.

By the early 1900s, the Philippines sugar industry was well established. The American colonialists played a key role in boosting the industry in the form of the Payne-Aldrich Act (1909). This important law created a tariff wall that guaranteed easy export of sugar to the states at prices held artificially well above world norms. It also created a situation in which the gap between rich and poor grew even greater, and ensured that there would be little economic incentive for modernization.

Read the full story HERE
©　Clarence Henderson, 2000


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Worldwide use

India

kigo for winter

Fresh sugar cane

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Japan

Sugar cane is mostly produced in Okinawa.

Flower of the sugar cane, satookibi no hana
砂糖黍の花（さとうきびのはな）
kigo for mid-winter

..... kanshoo no hana 甘蔗の花 (かんしょのはな)





sugar cane, satoo kibi 甘蔗 (さとうきび)
kigo for mid-autumn




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USA, TEXAS

kigo for winter

Sugarcane in Texas

In Texas the sugarcane is harvested October through January.

The sugarcane industry in Texas is located in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) in the counties of Cameron, Hidalgo, and Willacy, and is the fourth largest source of U.S. sugarcane. Sugarcane is produced on 43,000 acres, with 1.5 million tons harvested annually. Sugarcane growers in Texas organized the Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers, Inc. as a farmer-owned cooperative. Approximately 140 farmers grow sugarcane today.

Read more facts HERE
　© www.ipmcenters.org


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Things found on the way


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HAIKU

Sugarcane
from the grindstone -
a sweet harvest.

Wilfredo R. Bongcaron, Manila 2008

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Related words

***** PHILIPPINES SAIJIKI

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