The Beginnings of Big Sugar in Florida

The Beginnings of big sugar in Florida

Sugar to this day remains one of the main agricultural exports produced in Florida, and it’s history dates back to the turn of the 20th century. Men of the late 1800s saw the everglades, and the land south of Lake Okeechobee as a resource to be utilized or in clearer terms, abused. When laying out the plans for the development of the new agricultural land many men only saw the chance for profit and not the consequences of devolving this fragile ecosystem. For example, the Florida State Chemist Rufus E. Rose failed to see what the effect of draining and using chemicals on the Everglades would be on the ecosystem as a whole. All he saw was an opportunity to develop. The result would be the big sugar system we see today that opposes the local workers as well as uses lobbying and manipulation of government to keep the huge industry afloat while ignoring the environmental massive detrimental impact on the environment occurring.

When designing what the industry would look like in Florida, the sugar cane industry in Louisiana was observed. Men like L.A. Bringer brought much experience from their time in Louisiana. The problem became the difficult transfer of technology from Louisiana to Florida, which had an entirely different set of environmental factors. By 1919 promoters started to advertise the opportunity of sugar cultivation to the big sugar companies. The quality of the land however, had been exaggerated and were overlooked until it became a problem in the 1980s. Pennsuco, A Pennsylvania company, was one of the first companies to plant on the land. Problems soon presented themselves however, as the soil was too soft for the heavy machinery and the fertilizers did not react well with the soil. The result would be the construction of a research facility in 1921 and used to research on the chemical properties of Florida soil.

Soon it was discovered that the large amount of organic matter in Florida’s soil could be broken down by bacteria and used as rich agricultural land. In the Smith and Ames report, these claims became substantiated and men like Bror G. Dahlberg to enter,