The Caribbean Sugar Crisis: Consequences and Challenges

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Abstract
“Being in Sugar is like collecting Confederate currency”. This assessment, offered by anthropologist Sidney Mintz (1985), is shared by many sugar industry observers, insiders, and, increasingly, by many Caribbean officials. King sugar, instrumental in shaping the diverse political, economic, and social histories of the Caribbean since colonial times, confronts a seemingly intractable crisis: a severe, and sustained, disequilibrium between global demand and supply which makes export of sugar very unattractive. Except in those cases where preferential arrangements exist between producers and consumers-the Lomé Convention, the US sugar quota system, and the Soviet guaranteed purchase of Cuban sugar-world prices for sugar are at a record low, well below production costs.

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