| Bananas | £842,689 |
| Citrus fruits | 90,468 |
as against
| Sugar | 122,328 |
| Rum | 98,923 |
On January 14, 1907, an appalling earthquake occurred. The buildings in Kingston and Port Royal were destroyed or badly damaged and about one thousand people were killed.
In 1906 the area under cultivation in Jamaica was 750,000 acres and of this only 26,000 were devoted to cane. Sugar planting has been in a stagnant condition for years and only a limited number of the estates that still carry on the industry are making money. Many have stopped growing cane entirely and have turned to bananas, cocoanuts, coffee or cattle raising. In certain districts there is plenty of fertile alluvial land, ample water and cheap labor, but proper cultivation is lacking, so that the results are far from what they should be. Planting simply consists of sticking a piece of cane stalk in a hole in the ground and very little ploughing is done, consequently the weeds are never under control. It takes about twelve months for the cane to ripen and the yield per acre varies widely, ranging from ten to forty-five tons. The average may be taken as about twenty tons per acre.
The island boasts of three central factories and eighty-two small mills, only twelve of the latter having vacuum pans. The others make muscavado sugar and rum. In the operation of boiling by no means all of the sugar is extracted, as a pure liquor is needed for the manufacture of good rum and quite a large amount of cane juice is made into rum direct.
In the process of making muscavado sugar in Jamaica, the cane juice after being brought to boiling point in an open kettle is transferred into a second kettle, where it is treated and the heavy impurities allowed to settle. The clear juice then goes into copper walls, a series of three or more large open copper pans, called teaches. These pans rest above an open fire fed by bagasse, cane trash and wood. After the juice has been boiled to a certain density in the first pan it is transferred to the second and the final concentration takes place in the third or fourth, as the case may be. In some mills the last boiling is done with steam in what is called an Aspinall pan, instead of over an open fire. When the mass becomes sufficiently thick, it is put into large tanks and left to crystallize. Sometimes it is kept in motion during crystallization, but usually no stirring whatever is done. Crystallization completed, the mass is packed in hogsheads with perforated bottoms. These hogsheads are allowed to stand over drainage troughs for two or three weeks so that the molasses may run off. The holes are then plugged up and the sugar is ready to be shipped.
The percentage of sugar, glucose and water in Jamaica muscavados is approximately:
| No. | 1 | Sucrose | 88.6 | Glucose | 5.30 | Water | 3.42 |
| 2 | 86.2 | 4.40 | 3.72 | ||||
| 3 | 83.9 | 5.92 | 4.66 | ||||
| 4 | 83.0 | 6.98 | 3.84 |
Management is slipshod and the extraction is poor. It takes fifteen tons of cane and sometimes more to produce a ton of sugar.