The Sugar Industry

Sugar has long been an essential crop of the Caribbean countries and the news of reform has left the islands scrambling to maintain a viable economy. In order to understand how the islands economies became so dependent on sugar, it must be made clear how sugar became so important, the extent of the Caribbean’s dependency on preferential pricing and how the preferences have been reformed. The sugar industry has been a part of the Caribbean since shortly after being discovered and colonized by people of the western world. Its importance can be seen through

significant historical changes such as slavery, indentured servitude and finally through

independence. The sugar industry creates a significant amount of jobs for the uneducated residents of the Caribbean. According to McDonald (2003) it was estimated in two thousand and three that the industry employed approximately one hundred and twenty-five thousand workers in both direct and indirect employment that otherwise may be unemployed. It served as a tourist attraction and was a major ingredient in the production of Molasses and Rum, both of which generated significant export revenues. Most importantly, sugar exported to the member countries of the European Union generated significant revenues. The European Union (EU) sugar program as it was original implemented in nineteen sixty-eight, served to facilitate competitiveness by compensating intuitional price cuts for sugar with direct income payments. The program consisted of a mixture of price arrangements along with production