Agricultural History Review, Volume 59 Part 1 (2011), p. 147

Florida’s Everglades are known to be both a natural paradise and an ecological tragedy as a swampland dying from thirst. The latter is not caused by recent overexploitation. The Everglades’ environmental challenges are the result of a process that goes back to the nineteenth century in which Florida’s sugar industry played a crucial role. Therefore, Florida’s sugarcane agro-industry became the centre of the recent political tempest over the Everglades’ restoration program. This present-day political struggle sets the stage for Gail M. Hollander’s environmental history of Raising cane in the ’Glades. The global sugar trade and the transformation of Florida.

In seven chapters, Hollander presents the history of the Everglades as a history of industrialisation and agro-environmental conflicts, chronologically starting with the US acquisition of Florida in 1822 and ending with today’s environmental problems. These conflicts occurred, among others, between beet and cane producers, producers and consumers, sugar cane growers and refiners, Cuba and Florida, and producers and environmentalists. By situating these conflicts in their local, national, regional, and international contexts, Hollander’s book interestingly brings together a global history of sugar trade in the age of globalisation, an economic and technical history of Florida’s sugar industry, a socio-political history of national sugar lobbying, and an environmental history of the Everglades as a region that has to be understood as a part of the political economy of food and agriculture in the United States.

In the late nineteenth century, the draining of the Everglades was inspired by the ‘big sugar’ producers’ anxiety regarding the place of the US sugar economy in the global sugar trade, as well as the question of the US being dependent on sugar imports. ‘Big sugar’ producers demanded that hundreds of thousands of acres of swampland be drained in order to grow sugar cane. At the same time, and in order to defend America’s ‘sugar bowl’, they lobbied for a national protection policy, especially against their strong Cuban competitors. This was the period in which Florida’s sugar producers established the lobbying policy that they would maintain from then onwards. In the early twentieth century, sugar became an indispensable part of the American’s basket of goods. Therefore, provision of sugar was a national security concern. This priority of US policy can be traced throughout the first half of the twentieth century and the Cold War era. During and between the World Wars, cheap foreign sugar, especially from Cuba, had been the major source of supply to the US. The Cuban revolution of 1959 put an end to these imports. In turn, Florida’s sugar production grew fivefold. The good days for Florida’s sugar industry came to an end in the 1980s and 1990s, when producers had to face public criticism of the environmental damage they caused. Even so, Florida’s sugar industry has not lost its importance for the US economy at the end of the twentieth century. In the face of the increasing global oil shortage, sugar has emerged as a promising alternative source of energy. Therefore it seems that the end has not yet come for the environmental story of raising cane in the ’Glades. For these reasons, the political economy of Florida’s sugar industry is the skeleton of Hollander’s story.

Hollander presents Cuba as the counterpart to Florida’s sugar industry. Its sugar production served as a model for Florida, while at the same time it was Florida’s strongest competitor. Therefore, a comparative outlook between Florida’s and Cuba’s environmental challenges would have been an interesting addendum to the book. Furthermore, it would have been worthwhile not only to focus on economic competition in the American market, but also to fathom the competition for quotas in international trade. The twentieth century has been the century of international economic planning. The conflict about global quotas between Florida’s and Cuba’s industry would have provided an interesting pars pro toto for international agreements which, by and large, are analytically under-represented in this book about the global sugar trade.

These are only minor criticisms. Raising cane in the ’Glades is an important contribution to the history of globalisation, agriculture, commodities and environment. It shows in a fascinating way the ‘glocalisational’ effects of global commodity trade and its local environmental implications.