SUGAR STORY OF SEASONS SERIES

In the factory the workers usually have to throw in some sugar dust to initiate crystal formation. You may have done something like this at school but probably not with sugar because it is difficult to get the crystals to grow well. In the pan even more water is boiled off until conditions are right for sugar crystals to grow. The syrup is placed into a very large pan for boiling, the last stage. The evaporation is undertaken in order to improve the energy efficiency of the factory. Sometimes the syrup is cleaned up again but more often it just goes on to the crystal-making step without any more cleaning.

Once this is done, the juice is thickened up into a syrup by boiling off the water using steam in a process called evaporation. The factory can clean up the juice quite easily with slaked lime (a relative of chalk) which settles out a lot of the dirt so that it can be sent back to the fields. Either way the juice is pretty dirty: the soil from the fields, some small fibres and the green extracts from the plant are all mixed in with the sugar. In other factories a diffuser is used as is described for beet sugar manufacture. The sweet juice comes gushing out and the cane fibre is carried away for use in the boilers.

SUGAR STORY OF SEASONS SERIES

In many factories the cane is crushed in a series of large roller mills: similar to a mangle which was used to squeeze the water out of clean washing a century ago. The first stage of processing is the extraction of the cane juice. The cane is taken to the factory: often by truck or rail wagon but sometimes on a cart pulled by a bullock or a donkey! Harvest times tend to be during the dry season and the length of the harvest ranges from as little as 2 ½ months up to 11 months.

Sugar cane is harvested by chopping down the stems but leaving the roots so that it re-grows in time for the next crop. You should return here when you close that down again. The More Detail button will take you to the web site of Kew Gardens in a separate window. Where it differs from many crops is that it re-grows from the roots so the plant lasts many cycles before it is worn out. It typically takes about 12 months to reach maturity although the time varies widely around the world from as short as six months in Louisiana to 24 months in some places. Sugar cane is a sub-tropical and tropical crop that prefers lots of sun and lots of water - provided that its roots are not waterlogged.

Sugar story of seasons