A destructive force in history, and in the present, is the farming of sugar. For centuries it relied on, and help fuel, slavery. Today, its farming causes more harm than all of cocaine drug trafficking. For example, sugarcane farming in Colombia is as dangerous to Black communities as is cocaine trafficking.
THE DESTRUCTIVE NATURE OF SUGAR FARMING
The worst story in food history: how sugar destroyed everything - a 58 minute video.
- OTR Food & History, September 2025
The massive agricultural project for the production of sugar, bioethanol and rice, PSN Merauke, is in violation of human rights and destroying the environment in South Papua, as determined in a report by the Indonesian Human Rights Commision KomnasHAM
- Rainforest Rescue, 13 May 2025
Mass-produced sugar came from chemicals, corruption - and environmental destruction
- The Times of India, 22 February 2025
Sugar production leads to occupational, community and planetary health problems
- EcoHealth, 13 February 2025
Scientsts sound the alarm on harmful sugarcane farming practices with devastating effects - reducing sugarcane waste and the frequency of industry sugarcane waste burns can improve the health of humans and the environment
- The Cool Down, 5 February 2025
The adverse health effects of air pollution from sugarcane burning
- Environmental Health Perspectives, 30 January 2025
Finance Uncovered helped reporters in Nigeria with the numbers as they sought answers over deadly protest and toxic chemicals at Dangote plant.
- Finance Uncovered, 25 November 2024
Flooded farms, poisoned water: the pollution caused by the largest sugar refinery in Nigeria
- Finance Uncovered, 19 September 2024
The deadly protest Nigeria's top sugar refinery does not want you to know about
- Finance Uncovered, 17 September 2024
Land destruction/clearing has begun is what is being called the biggest deforestation effort in the world, as Indonesia looks to establish 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of sugarcane plantations in the Papua region
- MongaBay, 19 September 2024
Habitat destruction and biodiversity loss due to sugarcane expansion
- Int. J. Molecular Evolution and Biodiversity, 17 April 2024
Sugar: nine reasons why our sweet tooth is harming the planet - as well as ourselves
- National World, 17 March 2024
Labor abuse and work accidents on plantations of the largest sugar producer in Cameroon (which is the subsidiary of a French company)
- MongaBay, 31 January 2024
A fire in the river: Big Sugar and 'black snow' in the Everglades. For more than a century, the sugar harvest has shaped the lives of people in the Everglades and transformed the region - and put the most vulnerable people at risk.
- Rolling Stone, 7 January 2024
The Omo sugar projects in Ethiopia cause "starvation and death"
- The Reporter, 25 February 2023
Dam and sugar plantations yield starvation and death in Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley
- The Oakland Institute, 8 February 2023
Stop the burn: how sugarcane field burning is devastating communities in South Florida
- Sierra Club, 14 September 2022
Big Sugar and the bittersweet 'red tide' in Florida. Since the 1930s, the U.S. government has supported the domestic sugar industry through an elaborate, Soviet-style import quota and price support system. The northern third of the Everglades has been drained and turned into these sugar cane fields.
- Cato Institute, 14 September 2022
How sugarcane production harms wild animals
- Faunalytics, 10 August 2022
The hidden truth of sugar's unsustainable environmental toll
- Yummzy, 26 November 2021
New study highlights human rights impacts of the sugarcane industry on Black Communities in Colombia
- Forest Peoples Programme, 23 June 2021
"A shame for the world": the fragile forest ecosystem of Uganda is destroyed for sugar
- The Guardian, 18 June 2020
The practice of sugar cane farming and agriculture of the state of Maharashtra, India, is unethical and should be stopped immediately
- Roskilde University, 2020
Sugar produces bitter results for the environment
- ThoughtCo., 05 August 2018
Candy-coated cartel: time to kill the [socialist] sugar program in the USA controlled by the federal government
- Cato Institute, 10 April 2018
The 'silent massacre' killing sugarcane workers in El Salvador
- PBS, 28 February 2018
Teenage workers may be dying to produce sugar in Nicaragua
- The Child Labor Coalition, 21 September 2017
Sugarcane farmers in India: a cycle of debt and suicide
- Al Jazeera, 03 April 2017
The return of sugarcane as a driver of tropical deforestation
- Conservation Letters, 31 March 2015
Thousands of sugar cane workers in Nicaragua die as wealthy nations stall on solutions
- The Center for Public Integrity, 12 December 2011/i>
Brazil: sugar cane plantations devastate the vital Cerrado region (the biologically diverse area of Brazil's savannah)
- Pacific Ecologist, Summer 2009
Sugar production in Europe leaves the environment with a bitter taste
- World Wildlife Foundation, 22 November 2004
An estimated 6 million hectares of cropland are lost per year throughout the world due to severe erosion and degradation caused by intensive sugar production.