Bagasse

The recent emergence of bagasse—the fibrous mass left after sugar cane is crushed—as an important source of biofuel may seem to those who have experienced the realities of plantation life like the ultimate cosmic irony. Its newly assessed value—one producer of bagasse pellets argues that the “symbol of what once was waste, now could be farming gold” (“Harvesting” 2014)—promises to increase sugar producers’ profits while pushing into deeper oblivion the plight of the workers worldwide who continue to produce sugar cane in deplorable conditions and ruined environments. Its newly acquired status as a “renewable” and carbon-neutral source of energy also obscures the damage that cane production continues to inflict on the land and the workers that produce it. The concomitant deforestation, soil erosion and use of poisonous chemical fertilizers and pesticides on land and water continue to degrade the environment of those fated to live and work amid its waste. It obscures, moreover, the role of sugar cane cultivation as the most salient form of power and environmental violence through which empires manifested their hegemony over colonized territories throughout the Caribbean and beyond. ¹