Sugar Cane Juicer
A short history of natural sweetness.
Sweetness has been prized throughout history. Consequently, foods that contain this taste have long been highly valued.
Honey is the earliest known example since time immemorial. Plants have used photosynthesis to create sucrose, which we call sugar.
However, the use of sugar as a sweet food dates back only few thousand years. Thus, of these two original gifts from nature, sugar
from sugarcane is the younger brother. It nevertheless remains a unique sweetener, contributing a range of qualities in modern food
manufacture.
The Origin.
Sugarcane originated in what is now New Guinea. From there, it spread along the migration routes to Southeast Asia, India, and Polynesia.
The Arabs then brought cane-growing to the countries bordering the Mediterranean, while the Spanish and Portuguese established the first sugar plantations in South America and the Caribbean.
Honey without Bees.
The first historical account of sugarcane is reported by Nearchos, an admiral under Alexander the Great, who in 327 BC had seen a type of
reed by the river Indus that yielded “honey without bees”. The crusader, Albert von Aachen was surprised that the inhabitants of Tripoli
sucked a kind of cane, which they called zukra.
Sugar for the rich.
Until the 17th century, sugar was beyond the financial means of most people. For a long time it was a luxury item found only on the tables
of palaces and aristocratic mansions. The English court of Elizabeth I apparently had a fondness to sweeten almost everything they ate with
sugar, perhaps because the Queen had a sweet tooth?
In the 18th century, consumption increased, particularly due to the growing popularity of tea and coffee drinking. During the 19th and 20th centuries sugar has increasingly been used in various foods and drinks products - where, apart from sweetness, its preserving and other qualities are appreciated.
The Cane plant.
All of life's energy originates from the sun. Green plants harness solar energy and store it in the form of carbohydrates. Sugarcane is
one of the most efficient converters of solar energy to food carbohydrates. The hard rind of the cane protects a softer fibrous centre,
which transports water and nutrients from the soil to the leaves where they are combined with carbon from the atmosphere to form sugar
(sucrose). The fibrous centre serves as a reservoir for sugar as the cane ripens.
The cane plant is a coarse growing member of the grass family with the juice being high in sugar content. In tropical countries it is
planted at almost any time of the year since the plant does not have a rest period. This results in heavier yields of cane and sugar.
Growing Sugarcane.
Cane stalks are cut into 30cm long "sets" and planted 10cm below the soil surface in rows 1.5m apart. Fertilizer is added and weeds are
only controlled for the first three months of planting. The crop is harvested a year after planting. After harvest, a second crop grows
from the below ground parts of the previous crop. Two or three crops are grown from each planting. Sugarcane is grown in mainly tropical
climates, but it can be found as far north as Southern Spain and as far south as Southern Australia.
Harvesting.
Harvesting is done by hand which is an extremely labour intensive task that employs the local people in areas where jobs are scarce.
The cane is cut at ground level with the top green leaves are cropped off and then the stalk is bundled whole. Once a complete bundle
has been assembled it is removed from the field. The bundle is weighed and may now be transferred to a larger vehicle for transport to
the sugar milling plant or in our case it will be put aside as per our order. The cane is then cleaned and cut into 50cm stalks and packed
into 25kg boxes and then sent to our shippers.