Sugarcane Worker in Charred Field

Workers bake in the searing hot sun cutting sugar and chew some of the sweet raw cane. Faces are blackened after the fields are burned. The sharp leaves destroy workers and tools, so they are burned before the raw sugar is harvested. The stalks are then loaded on a truck, taken to a mill to be processed into white and brown sugar. The Pomalca sugar cane coop located at Campo Rosaliais in Peru lost 100 hectres of land because El Nino flooding left the fields too rocky for planting.
© Melissa Farlow 2005 - Contact