When we were kids and went fishing (trolling), I remember the frustrating – and repeated – need to pull in and clean the lines from floating bagasse (cane trash) that entangled at the lures.
It wasn’t a new thing, floating masses of bagasse have littered beaches/shorelines, affected fishers, and impacted marine resources for decades before. Several attempts to use bagasse rather than dump it (fuel to operate the mill, canec, etc) helped, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that the dumping finally stopped.
Sugar was a canoe crop; the early Polynesian settlers to Hawaiʻi brought sugar cane with them and demonstrated that it could be grown successfully in the islands.
In pre-contact times, sugarcane was not processed as we know sugar today, but was used by chewing the juicy stalks. Its leaves were used for inside house thatching, or for outside (if pili grass wasn’t available.) The flower stalks of sugar cane were used to make a dart, sometimes used during the Makahiki games. (Canoe Crops)
The first written record of sugarcane in Hawaiʻi came from Captain James Cook, at the time he made initial contact with the Islands.
On January 19, 1778, off Kauai, he notes, “We saw no wood, but what was up in the interior part of the island, except a few trees about the villages; near which, also, we could observe several plantations of plantains and sugar-canes.” (Cook)
Cook notes that sugar was cultivated, “The potatoe fields, and spots of sugar-canes, or plantains, in the higher grounds, are planted with the same regularity; and always in some determinate figure; generally as a square or oblong”. (Cook)
Sugarcane, a tall perennial grass, is grown in tropical and semitropical climates. (USDA) “Sugar cane, described in botany as Saccharum officinarum, is a giant-stemmed perennial grass that grows from eight to twenty-four feet long. … As a rule, sugar cane consists of about eighty-eight per cent of juice and twelve per cent of fiber”. (Rolph)
The first reported processing of sugar was noted … “in 1802 sugar was first made at these islands, by a native of China, on the island of Lanai. He came here in one of the vessels trading for sandal wood, and brought a stone mill, and boilers, and after grinding off one small crop and making it into sugar, went back the next year with his fixtures, to China.” (Torbert; Polynesian, January 31, 1852)
As production grew, the early sugar ventures were either Hawaiian-owned or regulated by Hawaiian rulers. In most instances, the Hawaiian-owned sugar processing was managed by either Chinese sugar boilers or American shopkeepers in rural districts. (MacLennan) Although sugar cane had grown in Hawaiʻi for many centuries, its commercial cultivation for the production of sugar did not occur until 1825.
In that year, John Wilkinson and Governor Boki started a plantation in upper Mānoa Valley. Within six months they had seven acres of cane growing, and by the time Wilkinson died, in September 1826, they had actually manufactured some sugar. The sugar mill was later converted into a distillery for rum, prompting Kaʻahumanu to have the cane fields destroyed around 1829. (Schmitt)
Shortly thereafter, King Kamehameha III, seeking to encourage commercial cultivation of sugar by native Hawaiians offered the “acre system,” giving “out small lots of land, from one to two acres, to individuals for the cultivation of cane.”
“When the cane is ripe, the King finds all the apparatus for manufacturing & when manufactured takes the half. Of his half one fifth is regarded as the tax due to the aupuni (government) & the remaining four fifths is his compensation for the manufacture. These cane cultivators are released from all other demands of every description on the part of chiefs.” (Armstrong (1839;) MacLennan)
About this time, the initial signs of commercial sugar are found on Maui, in Wailuku. In 1840, the King ordered an iron mill from the US, and it was erected by August. Hung & Co in 1841 advertised the sale of sugar and sugar syrup from its 150-acre plantation in Wailuku. More than likely, this was sugar from the King’s Mill. (MacLennan)
Early plantations were small and didn’t fare too well. Soon, most would come to realize that “sugar farming and sugar milling were essentially great-scale operations.” (Garvin)
Then, the King sought to expand sugar cultivation and production, as well as expand other agricultural ventures to support commercial agriculture in the Islands. In a speech to the Legislature in 1847, the King notes:
“I recommend to your most serious consideration, to devise means to promote the agriculture of the islands, and profitable industry among all classes of their inhabitants. It is my wish that my subjects should possess lands upon a secure title; enabling them to live in abundance and comfort, and to bring up their children free from the vices that prevail in the seaports.”
“What my native subjects are greatly in want of, to become farmers, is capital with which to buy cattle, fence in the land and cultivate it properly. I recommend you to consider the best means of inducing foreigners to furnish capital for carrying on agricultural operations, that thus the exports of the country may be increased …” (King Kamehameha III Speech to the Legislature, April 28, 1847; Archives)
A few things helped kick-start this vision – following finding gold in 1848, the California gold rush stimulated a small boom in commercial agriculture for the Islands – particularly in potatoes and sugar. However, by the end of the 1850s, the boomlet became a depression (California started to supply its own needs.)
The American Civil War virtually shut down Louisiana sugar production during the 1860s. Hawaiian-grown sugar soon replaced much of this southern sugar through the duration of the conflict.
By the end of the war, over thirty extremely prosperous plantations were in operation and expanded to new levels previously unheard of before the war’s commencement.
Hawaiʻi’s industrial plantations began to emerge at this time (1860s;) they were further fueled by the Treaty of Reciprocity – 1875 between the United States and the Kingdom of Hawai‘i eliminated the major trade barrier to Hawai‘i’s closest and major market.
A century after Captain James Cook’s arrival in Hawaiʻi, sugar plantations started to dominate the landscape. Hawai‘i’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880; these twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system.
The industry came to maturity by the turn of the century; the industry peaked in the 1930s. Hawaiʻi’s sugar plantations employed more than 50,000 workers and produced more than 1-million tons of sugar a year; over 254,500-acres were planted in sugar.
Sugarcane is crushed in the mill to extract and process the sugar. Several waste products are produced by the sugar industry – one was bagasse (the fibrous residue that remains after sugarcane stalks are crushed to extract the juice), and the mills would flume it out of the mill and simply dump it in the ocean.
Later, some of the bagasse was made into fiber board. In 1929, Hawaiian Cellulose Ltd, a subsidiary of the Waiākea Mill Company applied for a patent for the manufacture of it. (County of Hawai‘i) They made ‘canec.’
Canec was originally the brand name for pressed fiber board made by Hawaiian Cane Products, Ltd, but it became commonly used to refer to all pressed board of this type.
Also, later, “After passing through the last mill, as much cane pulp (bagasse) as needed is fed into the mill fireroom for use as fuel.” (EPA) The bagasse was pelletized and fueled the boiler.
In 1971, ecological studies of coral communities along the Hamakua Coast of the island of Hawaii resulted in the instigation of a number of Environmental Protection Agency restrictions regarding ocean disposal by sugar mills.
These included, among other things, the elimination of bagasse discharge into the ocean and significant reductions in total suspended solid (TSS). Compliance with EPA standards was achieved in 1979. (Grigg)
Mats of bagasse no longer clogged and smothered rocky bottom habitats. Also mats of bagasse on the ocean surface no longer fouled fishing boats and fishing gear. (Grigg)
