Hawaii’s sugar workers are packing up the state’s final harvest and waving goodbye to an industry that was once king, says NPR. Mechanization in mills on the mainland, competition from Brazil, and rising labor costs have crippled Hawaiian sugar. Now only one mill remains, and when it shuts down at the end of the year, 675 workers will lose their jobs.
“[That] sugar mill started harvesting cane on Maui 145 years ago, around the time sugarcane plantations began taking over the islands’ landscapes when the Civil War cut off sugar supplies from the South,” says NPR. “Then, in the 1870s, the U.S. signed a “reciprocity treaty” with the Kingdom of Hawaii. The United States agreed to cut tariffs on Hawaiian sugar and rice, in exchange for Hawaii cutting tariffs on imported cotton and other American products.”
Immigrants came from all over the world, especially China, Japan and the Philippines, to work in the sugar industry, creating Hawaii’s multicultural society.
But after the Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar (HC&S) company, which owns the mill, lost $30 million last year, the company had little choice but to end an era.