In 1950, the Trinidad Guardian pub­lished a lengthy ar­ti­cle—“Colum­bus Brings Sug­ar Cane to West In­dies.” The au­thor was Er­ic Williams, the fu­ture prime min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The au­thor stat­ed that in 1493, Christo­pher Colum­bus trans­port­ed cane across the ocean, “…with the de­lib­er­ate in­ten­tion of ac­cli­ma­tis­ing it and mak­ing the West In­dies the sug­ar bowl of Eu­rope.”

More than a decade lat­er, in 1962, Williams, in a chap­ter “The Bank­rupt­cy of Sug­ar” in his book His­to­ry of the Peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, iden­ti­fied the ear­ly com­pe­ti­tion and ob­sta­cles faced by the British West In­di­an sug­ar cane in­dus­try. Sug­ar nev­er re­cov­ered.

In No­vem­ber 1971, Trevor Su­dama pub­lished an ar­ti­cle in TAPIA. The ar­ti­cle was ti­tled, “What fu­ture in sug­ar?” and he re­ferred to sug­ar as “this rel­ic of colo­nial­ism.” Su­dama con­tend­ed that “the sug­ar work­er and cane farmer have be­come two of the ma­jor ca­su­al­ties of our mixed cap­i­tal­is­tic so­ci­ety.” He felt there was a need for “al­ter­na­tive ex­port mar­kets”, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and ex­am­i­na­tion of the ex­or­bi­tant cost of pro­duc­tion. His con­cerns and sug­ges­tions of oth­ers were ig­nored over the decades.

Sug­ar work­ers in T&T once dis­played sac­ri­fice, per­sis­tence, hard work and loy­al­ty. To­day, their work eth­ic and val­ues have dis­ap­peared. Some of us have nev­er ful­ly un­der­stood the reper­cus­sions of the ma­li­cious clo­sure of the sug­ar in­dus­try. In April 1994, the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture ad­vised, “With all the dif­fi­cul­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with sug­ar pro­duc­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, it still is the best op­tion for util­i­sa­tion of most of the land now un­der sug­ar.” This ad­vice was ig­nored.

In 2001, the head­line in the Trinidad Guardian, “Ca­roni faces shut­down”, sig­nalled the col­lapse. Sub­se­quent­ly, the clo­sure of Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed in 2003, and re­trench­ment of al­most 9,000 work­ers, was a se­ri­ous blow to those who were bread­win­ners for their fam­i­lies. Those work­ers who were em­ployed in the sug­ar in­dus­try made valu­able con­tri­bu­tions.

How were these un­sung he­roes treat­ed? Some of these ex-work­ers have died and oth­ers are be­low the pover­ty-line be­cause their sav­ings are de­plet­ed. Some lost their in­vest­ments as a re­sult of the un­for­tu­nate col­lapse of two fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions—Cli­co and Hin­du Cred­it Union.

There have been ru­mours and re­ports of ex-work­ers who wast­ed their mon­ey on vices as gam­bling. Some are un­able to cope with un­em­ploy­ment and suf­fered from men­tal de­pres­sion whilst oth­ers were un­able to deal with health chal­lenges in­clud­ing di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion. This has af­fect­ed fam­i­lies and re­sult­ed in di­vorces, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and pre­ma­ture deaths.

The demise of sug­ar is not odd. We tend to as­so­ciate agri­cul­ture with low­ly man­u­al labour. In 2026, hum­ble farm­ers con­tin­ue to suf­fer as their crops are de­stroyed by flood­wa­ters and they are vic­tims of prae­di­al lar­ce­ny. De­spite the ne­glect and chal­lenges, our strug­gling farm­ers con­tin­ue their gar­den­ing, cul­ti­vat­ing fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles, tend­ing poul­try, cows, sheep and goats.

The Gov­ern­ment’s pro­gres­sive de­ci­sion to re­open the Debe cam­pus will mean the avail­abil­i­ty of ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion for thou­sands, in­clud­ing the de­scen­dants of ex-sug­ar work­ers.

Un­em­ployed men and women, who once worked on the sug­ar plan­ta­tions, are no longer lib­er­at­ed. Those who are still alive, now de­pend on as­sis­tance and health care from the Gov­ern­ment. Al­so, many of these re­trenched work­ers are un­able to send their chil­dren to pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

Past gov­ern­ments should have con­sid­ered pro­vid­ing schol­ar­ships to the chil­dren of ex-work­ers who are will­ing to be ed­u­cat­ed. Few made ef­forts to as­sist these for­mer sug­ar work­ers. Pri­vate busi­ness­es should have con­sid­ered fund­ing pro­grammes to im­prove the wel­fare of this for­got­ten and mar­gin­alised part of pop­u­la­tion.

It’s too late to con­sid­er re­viv­ing the sug­ar cane in­dus­try. Hous­es have been built on some of the prime agri­cul­tur­al lands. If ever the sug­ar in­dus­try is to be re­vived, maybe it could be achieved on a small­er scale. Of course, this ven­ture will need enor­mous for­eign and lo­cal in­vest­ment.

Oth­er Caribbean coun­tries need to con­sid­er pro­tect­ing or re­viv­ing their sug­ar in­dus­try. Ig­nor­ing agri­cul­ture could ex­plain why T&T’s an­nu­al food im­port bill is so high.

In 2026, it is a tragedy that fu­ture gen­er­a­tions in T&T will nev­er wit­ness the plant­i­ng and har­vest­ing of cane. They will nev­er see the weigh­ing of canes or trans­port to the fac­to­ries.

They will nev­er be able to wit­ness tall cane stalks sway­ing in the wind and the an­nu­al cane fires. These would on­ly be mem­o­ries con­fined to pho­tographs, text­books or oral his­to­ry.

Fur­ther­more, it is a pity to wit­ness the si­lence ac­com­pa­ny­ing the clo­sure of the Sug­ar Archives Cen­tre & the Sevil­la Sug­ar Mu­se­um in Cou­va. The younger gen­er­a­tion should know this as­pect of our agri­cul­tur­al past, the for­mer lifeblood of our re­gion.