SugarCane, Saccharum officinarum

Sugarcane is a native of South-East Asia, where it was used at least since  8000 BC. Crystallized sugar is known to man  for about 5 000 years (Indus Valley civilization).
Emperor Darius discovered sugar during his wars with several states in India  in 510 BC (" the reed that gives honey without the bees").  Arabs  conquered Persia  in 642 AD  and spread sugarcane  all over Middle East and North Africa. Western Europeans got sugar with the first Crusades in 11th century. Sugar reached England in 1099, and was in grand demand ever since. In 1319, a pound of sugar was worth 2 shillings, an equivalent of 24 gallons of medium quality Ale,  or an entire Somerset pig, or 48 chickens, or 4 geese, or 45-50 pounds of cheese, or  anywhere from 120 to 240 salted herrings, you get the idea.
By 1750 Britain had only 120 sugar mills that were producing only 30 000 tons  of sugar per year.

As a luxury item it was taxed heavily by the crown and in 1781  sugar  taxes brought  326 000 pounds to London, by 1815 this figure was as high as 3 million. Only  by 1874, with help of Prime Minister Gladstone, the tax was abolished and sugar became ( more or less) affordable  to everybody.
Now sugarcane is the biggest  world's crop  by weight . Over 111 countries are growing Sugarcane, and in 2009 the world production was over 1 682 577 768 tonnes, leaving an average Earthling with over 247 kg of sugarcane. This is roughly 25 kg of sugar, plus some other nutrients. Considering traces of other things sugarcane juice  has it's enough to last you almost 50 days at 2000 calories per day diet.
Biggest producer ( both by total weight and per capita) is Brazil with 689 895 024 tonnes of sugarcane in 2009.
Brazilian sugarcane crop of 2009 was the largest  crop of anything, anywhere , ever.

It was over 3.64 tonnes of sugarcane per each Brazilian. Imagine that--nearly 1 kg of sugar per day! You'd probably  get diabetes  within a month  if you tried to consume that much. Obviously, not all of  the sugarcane is turned into sugar, but still a pretty impressive number.

23 727 751 hectares were used for sugarcane production in 2009, or almost 1.51% of all arable land available in the world. Brazil uses over 15% of all it's arable land for sugarcane,  and this number is growing steadily at the cost of Amazon.
Sugarcane yields are usually very high, assuming there are plenty of water available ( sugarcane uses 150-300 liters of water for 1 kg of dry matter)
Average yield  worldwide in 2009 was almost 71 tons per hectare. Record for 2009 belongs to Peru , 131.8 tonnes per hectare. Record yield ever belongs to Peru also, almost 157 tonnes per hectare in 1972.
Lowest yields since 1961 were in 1962, 48.4 tonnes per hectare.
Biggest crop of sugarcane ever was in 2008, over 1736 million tonnes. Worst, since 1961-- 436.8 million tonnes in 1962.
Land usage for sugarcane grew 2.72 times between 1961 and 2008.
Sugarcane prices are different from 1 country to another, since nearly all  producing countries intervene  in sugar cane production  in one way or another. In India for example current prices are about 2 000 Indian rupees  per ton.
As for ethanol, you need about 17 grams of  sugar to get 1% of alcohol content , so a 1 liter of 96% pure ethanol would require  1632 grams of sugar.  So there is enough sugarcane out there to make  15.3 liters of ethanol per each human ( as of 2009). Worldwide it would be 104.3 billion liters   or 27.56 billion gallons of ethanol. Never mind that then we would have to give up on 70% of all sugar available on Earth

My usual sources are fao.org, cia.gov, usda.gov, alibaba.com and many others.Thank you for your interest!


List of all articles at Ironrye:
 http://ironrye.blogspot.com/2011/10/list-of-all-articles-at-iron-rye.html

Production by countries:       

	item	2007		2008		2009
Afghanistan	Sugar cane	70000		62960			M
American Samoa	Sugar cane	28		28			M
Angola	Sugar cane	360000		360000			M
Antigua and Barbuda	Sugar cane				M		M
Argentina	Sugar cane	29950000		29950000		29950000	F
Australia	Sugar cane	36397000		32621113		31456858
Bahamas	Sugar cane	57500		57500		57500	F
Bangladesh	Sugar cane	5769945		4983656			M
Barbados	Sugar cane	354000		311000		320000	F
Belize	Sugar cane	1200050		980114		917728
Benin	Sugar cane	40375		40920			M
Bhutan	Sugar cane	13300		13300			M
Bolivia (Plurinational State of)	Sugar cane	6402528		7009195		7437696
Brazil	Sugar cane	549707328		645300182		689895024
Burkina Faso	Sugar cane	455000		455000	F		M
Burundi	Sugar cane	180000		180000	F		M
Cambodia	Sugar cane	286811		385238		350000	*
Cameroon	Sugar cane	1450000	F	1450000	F	1450000	F
Cape Verde	Sugar cane	28500	F	28500	F		M
Central African Republic	Sugar cane	95000	F	95000	F	95000	F
Chad	Sugar cane	390000	F	390000	F		M
China	Sugar cane	113731917		124917502		113745502	*
Colombia	Sugar cane	38500000	F	38500000	F	38500000	F
Congo	Sugar cane	540000	F	600000	F		M
Costa Rica	Sugar cane	4500000	F	4200000	F	4100000	F
Côte d'Ivoire	Sugar cane	1636330		1630000	F		M
Cuba	Sugar cane	11900000		15700000		14900000
Democratic Republic of the Congo	Sugar cane	1550000	F	1550000	F		M
Djibouti	Sugar cane	52	F	52	F		M
Dominica	Sugar cane	4800	F	4800	F		M
Dominican Republic	Sugar cane	4823910		4823910	F		M
Ecuador	Sugar cane	8360001		9341095		8473141
Egypt	Sugar cane	17014272		16469947		17000000	F
El Salvador	Sugar cane	4956477		5249939		5736063
Ethiopia	Sugar cane	2200000	F	2300000	F	1100000	F
Fiji	Sugar cane	2478000		2321000		2247000
French Guiana	Sugar cane	5500	F	5500	F		M
French Polynesia	Sugar cane	3000	F	3000	F		M
Gabon	Sugar cane	220000	F	220000	F	220000	F
Ghana	Sugar cane	145000	F	145000	F		M
Grenada	Sugar cane	7200	F	7200	F		M
Guadeloupe	Sugar cane	732500	*	732500	F		M
Guatemala	Sugar cane	25436764		25436764	F		M
Guinea	Sugar cane	283000	F	283000	F		M
Guinea-Bissau	Sugar cane	5500	F	6000	F		M
Guyana	Sugar cane	3099200		2766500			M
Haiti	Sugar cane	1100000		1110000			M
Honduras	Sugar cane	6080910		6141719		6203136
India	Sugar cane	355519700		348187900		285029000
Indonesia	Sugar cane	25300000	*	26000000	*	26500000	F
Iran (Islamic Republic of)	Sugar cane	5314825		3097481		3034936
Iraq	Sugar cane	0	*	3720		6276
Jamaica	Sugar cane	1968000		1968000	F		M
Japan	Sugar cane	1500000		1598000		1515000
Kenya	Sugar cane	5204214		5112000		5610702
Lao People's Democratic Republic	Sugar cane	323875		416730		433500
Lebanon	Sugar cane	0	F	0	F		M
Liberia	Sugar cane	265000	F	265000	F		M
Madagascar	Sugar cane	2600000	F	2600000	F		M
Malawi	Sugar cane	2500000	F	2500000	F		M
Malaysia	Sugar cane	559990		693850		700000	F
Mali	Sugar cane	341845		350000	F		M
Martinique	Sugar cane	215000	F	215000	F		M
Mauritius	Sugar cane	4235849		4533000		4669420
Mexico	Sugar cane	52089356		51106900			M
Morocco	Sugar cane	933850		912600			M
Mozambique	Sugar cane	2060667		2451170			M
Myanmar	Sugar cane	7000000	F	7000000	F		M
Nepal	Sugar cane	2599789		2485437		2354412
Nicaragua	Sugar cane	4480873		4304855			M
Niger	Sugar cane	240000	F	187752			M
Nigeria	Sugar cane	1506000		1500000	F		M
Oman	Sugar cane	952		952	F		M
Pakistan	Sugar cane	54741600		63920000		50045000
Panama	Sugar cane	1724662		1774929			M
Papua New Guinea	Sugar cane	320000	F	320000	F		M
Paraguay	Sugar cane	4100000		5079612		4800000
Peru	Sugar cane	8228623		9395959		10100076
Philippines	Sugar cane	22235000		26601400		22932819
Portugal	Sugar cane	5100	F	5100	F		M
Puerto Rico	Sugar cane	0	F	0	F		M
Réunion	Sugar cane	1575513	*	1773411			M
Rwanda	Sugar cane	97010		63000		63000	F
Saint Kitts and Nevis	Sugar cane	105000	F	111000	F		M
Saint Lucia	Sugar cane		M		M		M
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	Sugar cane	20000	F	20000	F		M
Samoa	Sugar cane	12	F	12	F		M
Senegal	Sugar cane	836000	F	836000	F		M
Sierra Leone	Sugar cane	70000	F	70000	F		M
Singapore	Sugar cane		M		M		M
Somalia	Sugar cane	215000	F	215000	F		M
South Africa	Sugar cane	19724000		20500000	F		M
Spain	Sugar cane	522		500	F		M
Sri Lanka	Sugar cane	782510		799450		919530
Sudan	Sugar cane	7467000		7453400		7526700
Suriname	Sugar cane	120000	F	120000	F		M
Swaziland	Sugar cane	5000000	F	5000000	F		M
Syrian Arab Republic	Sugar cane	0	F	0	F		M
Thailand	Sugar cane	64365482		73501610		66816446
Trinidad and Tobago	Sugar cane	810000	F	810000	F		M
Uganda	Sugar cane	2350000	F	2350000	F		M
United Republic of Tanzania	Sugar cane	2370000	F	2370000	F		M
United States of America	Sugar cane	27750600		25041020		27455950
United States Virgin Islands	Sugar cane		M		M		M
Uruguay	Sugar cane	293200		334081		359000	F
Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)	Sugar cane	9690791		9448162			M
Viet Nam	Sugar cane	17396700		16128000		15246400
Wallis and Futuna Islands	Sugar cane	20		20			M
Yemen	Sugar cane	0	F	0	F		M
Zambia	Sugar cane	2500000	F	2500000	F		M
Zimbabwe	Sugar cane	3000000	F	3100000	F		M
World + (Total)	Sugar cane	1617175828	A	1736271147	A	1682577768	A