The Brutality of Sugar

Few global industries avoid accountability like the sugar industry. That's the most important lens through which to read a haunting new work of investigative journalism by the the Fuller Project, which reports on global issues affecting women, and the New York Times. The Brutality of Sugar: Debt, Child Marriage and Hysterectomies is worthy of your time.

It tells the story of Archana Ashok Chaure, a sugarcane worker who has spent her whole young life cutting sugarcane; who was married off as a child bride before she understood what marriage meant; who lives in poverty so profound she skips meals so her kids can eat; and who last year felt forced to borrow money to get a hysterectomy to avoid missing work due to her painful periods and heavy bleeding.

"Nobody chooses this life," says Ms. Chaure of the cycle of debt and backbreaking labor so many women sugar workers face.

We cannot read this story without thinking of parallels to the Dominican sugar industry—the Fanjul-owned Central Romana plantation especially—that place U.S. Representative Dan Kildee called, "the closest thing that I've ever seen to modern slavery," before declaring "forced labor has no place in the U.S. supply chain." Central Romana sugar is presently banned from the U.S. market, and yet the plantation's owners, the Fanjul family, are also the largest beneficiary of the sugar program in the farm bill and major Kildee donors. "The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" is the most charitable way of describing the interplay between Big Sugar and federal policymakers. 

Here's the bottom line: Our foe is entrenched but change is coming, thanks to reporting like the above—and  to you. So, spread the word on our campaign and help us make change—for Archana Ashok Chaure and the thousands of women like her whose stories will never be told.