Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
end of the eighteenth century. At that time the ground was plowed, planted, and cultivated
with the same basic tools for corn and other row crops. At harvest, the cane would be cut by
hand and hauled by oxcart to a sugarhouse. There it would be crushed by rollers powered by
oxen, and the juice would drain over time into a series of vats. The juice would be brought
to a boil and defecated with lime. As the vats progressed, the juice would become a thick
syrup and finally would be crystallized in a cool room. There, gravity would be used over a
period of two to three weeks to separate the molasses (the dark brown syrup) from the raw
sugar.
In this setting the sugarhouse was owned by the farmer and several features constrained its
size. First, once sugarcane is cut the valuable complex sugar (sucrose) begins to breakdown
into less valuable simple sugars (fructose), making it important to process the raw cane
within a few days.
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This required the sugarhouse to be located close to the fields, given
the speed of oxcarts and the lack of railroads. This also meant that the cane, unlike the raw
sugar, could not be stored for any length of time. Without coordination between farmers,
each essentially had to mill his own cane. Second, the boiling required great amounts of
fuel. Heitman (1987) states that “[w]ith the exception of the cost of the cane itself, cordwood
to fuel the furnaces was the most expensive cost element of the sugar-making process.”
Several innovations took place during the nineteenth century that altered these constraints.
First, the introduction of steam-driven mills, like the steam-driven threshers, allowed larger
volumes of cane to be processed in one day. Second, rail allowed access to larger supplies
of cane and better access to large fuel supplies. Third, many mill technical advances like
centrifugals and chemical instruments increased large mill performance. All of these made
for huge changes in the optimal size of a sugar mill. Galloway (1989, 140) notes that whereas
the old plant could process 1.25 tons of cane per hour, a modern plant can process 227 tons
per hour.
Given the labor-intensive cultivation of sugarcane, there was no way a single farmer could
provide or even monitor enough wage labor to supply a large modern mill. Farmers entered
into long-term contracts with mill owners, or even became part owners of large mills, in
order to coordinate the harvest and keep the mill running continuously (predictions 9.7 and
9.8). This coordination was crucial because cut cane cannot be stored. Prior to the changes
in milling technology, the family farm was the dominant organization at both the growing
and processing stage. Once the new mill technology emerged, however, the family unit
only survived at the growing stage.
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Again, timeliness costs, in this case caused by the
rapid deterioration of the cane, influence the choice of organization. The distinction with
grains, which are storable after harvest, is striking. As table 1.7 shows, grain production
and processing are nearly always segregated by markets, while in sugarcane production
and processing are intimately linked through long-term contracts or ownership.
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