Some years ago, on the table at which I was sitting in a Barbados hotel, there was a small brown packet of sugar. In large letters it identified its contents as, “A natural cane Demerara sugar from Mauritius in the Indian Ocean” and then noted, in much smaller type, that it had been packaged by a Florida based company.
At the time I wrote about the absurdity of importing sugar from the Indian Ocean via the US to a country with a cane sugar industry. I contrasted this with what I found in Martinique where the sugar packet on the breakfast table bore the words “Mémoire d’une culture. Sucre de canne de la Martinique,” and an image that linked past to present and the island’s culture, through a simple line-drawing of a traditionally dressed worker cutting cane. The packaging also made clear its origin was with a local sugar factory.
Since that time some effort has been made to address the issue of branding by the region’s traditional industries. For example, I have recently come across in Europe sugar from both Belize and Guyana where the product has been labelled in a manner that promotes the origin of the product.
I have from a restaurant a packet of sugar from Guyana. In bold letters it says ‘Demerara Gold’ above a picture of a cane field.
