CHAMPARAN SUGAR COMPANY, LTD., BARRAH CHAKIA, CHAMPARAN, INDIA

As to the future of the industry in India, the theory is held by many that with modern scientific methods governing cultivation and manufacture, that country would be able not only to provide for its own requirements, but would be a competitor for export trade in the markets of the world. If such a condition is to be brought about, it will not be by improvement in the cane fields and the manufacturing plants alone. There are other problems to be overcome before there can be any great change for the better,—the stubborn opposition of the natives to innovations, the extreme smallness of individual holdings, poverty, lack of initiative and co-operation,—these are the main obstacles in the way of a material increase in the present enormous production, and they will not be easily surmounted.

CONCLUSION

The sugar crops of the world for the year 1915-16 aggregated 16,558,863 long tons, of which 10,571,079 tons were cane. The following table shows the production of the various countries:

TONS
NORTH AMERICA
United States
Hawaii 545,000
Louisiana 122,768
Texas 1,000
Porto Rico 400,000
Cuba 3,000,000
British West Indies
Trinidad 55,000
Barbados 50,000
Jamaica 15,000
Other British West Indies 30,000
French West Indies
Martinique 40,000
Guadeloupe 40,000
Danish West Indies
St. Croix 11,000
Santo Domingo 120,000
Mexico 75,000
Central America 30,000
SOUTH AMERICA
British Guiana 110,000
Surinam 13,000
Venezuela 10,000
Peru 200,000
Argentina 155,000
Brazil 194,000
Total in America 5,216,768
ASIA
British India 2,636,875
Java 1,264,000
Formosa 391,549
Philippine islands 300,000
Total in Asia 4,592,424
AUSTRALIA AND POLYNESIA
Queensland } 150,000
New South Wales }
Fiji 90,000
Total in Australia and Polynesia 240,000
AFRICA
Egypt 110,000
Mauritius 215,528
Réunion 40,000
Natal 100,000
Mozambique 50,000
Total in Africa 515,528
EUROPE
Spain 6,359
Total Cane Sugar 10,571,079
BEET SUGAR
Europe 5,190,387
United States 779,756
Canada 17,641
Total Beet Sugar 5,987,784
Grand Total Cane and Beet Sugar 16,558,863

From the time when the soldiers of Alexander of Macedon found sugar cane in India, over three hundred years before the Christian era, knowledge of sugar and its cultivation has accompanied great political movements.

In the sweep of the Saracen conquest from Persia to Egypt and on through northern Africa into Spain, sugar followed the footsteps of the invading armies. The Crusaders brought it with them when they returned home from Palestine. Daring Portuguese adventurers carried it to the Madeiras, the Azores, the Cape Verde and other islands of the east Atlantic ocean when they captured and colonized them in the fifteenth century. The New world received sugar cane at the hands of Christopher Columbus, who planted it in Santo Domingo in 1493. Shortly after Pizarro’s first landing it was brought to Peru by the Spanish conquerors. Cortés himself introduced it in Mexico, erecting the first mill there in 1520; and when, during the struggle between Great Britain and France, sugar was excluded from Europe by the blockading British fleet, it was Napoleon Bonaparte who called beet-sugar manufacture into being.