Many people are often surprised to hear that the harvesting and manufacturing processes that bring refined sugar to household shelves are heavily reliant upon inhumane labor practices.

While there is an awareness that sugar has a legacy entrenched in servitude and oppression, few are aware that those stains of history – forced and child labor – are still at work today in this seemingly benign sector. Sugar remains one of the most populously consumed and frequently traded commodities in the global marketplace. Over 100 countries around the world produce it in its raw form from cane or beet, and several more than that have refining plants which bring it to the sort most people use on a daily basis.

While the commodity chain of sugar is complex and in many ways ambiguous, it remains clear that it is at the level of growing and harvesting where some of the worst labor abuses in the world are in fact commonplace. The production processes with sugar are intense and tolling even under circumstances in which good labor practices are being upheld. While much of the harvesting methods have been mechanized in the developing world, producer countries that can not afford tractors, cutters and caners rely upon cheap labor to maintain export quotas. From Brazil to the Dominican Republic to Cote d'Ivoire, there is an overwhelming reliance upon abusive labor practices to maintain ill-gotten profits from sugar.

In the name of efficiency, children are frequently forced to miss school in order to cut cane. Such work is unforgiving, as these children are often put to work in fields without any regard for their personal safety. Using machetes, they rigorously harvest the cane, commonly suffering wounds from their sharp tools and from the crop itself. Rarely are they given access to adequate health services.

Numerous countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America also allow modern day slave plantations to flourish, sustained by the developing world's appetite for cheap sugar. Workers, children and adults alike, may live in deplorable conditions on the grounds where they work, paid in coupons that are only redeemable at stores located on the very same grounds. These stores and services are frequently operated by the owners, ensuring the companies profit not just from the sugar, but from the laborers as well. This system ensnares human beings into living their lives entirely on the plantations, giving them little hope of finding the financial security to relocate elsewhere.

In addition, several corporations continue to use herbicides that have disastrous effects on the human immune system, while denying their workers the proper safety gear to prevent direct exposure to chemicals that are known to be deadly. One plantation in Nicaragua has seen its workers suffer from a rare form of kidney disease known as chronic renal inefficiency (CRI), a fatal illness that has claimed the lives of over 600 workers at one mill alone. Such numbers are staggeringly higher than the average occurrence of CRI.

Countless attempts made by workers to organize have been undermined and halted by various corporations the world over. By stifling worker's rights to form unions, these companies have been able to preserve their domination over their laborers, ensuring their profit continues to supersede the welfare of human beings.