Independent study in Costa Rica, Latin America
Summer 1977 UofAla
Business/ Commerce in Costa Rica 3rd world manufacturing
Most of the manufacturing in costa Rica 1977 was mom and pop small operations. Going up into the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica was fortunate to tour and see a sugar manufacturing factory. This was one of the few heavy industrial plants/ manufacturing observed.
Sugar is the worlds fix. The world functions on sugar. Sugar is the absolute commodity that drives and produces the sustanance of the world! This raw sugar was brown colored; NOT brown sugar.. but real raw sugar. I believe this raw sugar was one of the secret ingredients of origional coca cola that made it taste so unique.
World sugar commodity prices have been around .11cents per pound for decades... US sugar processing with the US farm subsidies makes US sugar about .22cents per pound... twice the international trade cost. Almost every US bread product required sugar and this is where it came from.
This was a treat to see the raw "Alsucer" plant/ factory. From the crushing of raw cane into the many factory processes to produce the final raw "Alzucer" for shipment was a learning experience to understand peasant labor harvesting into a world commodity product.
While going through all the proccessing stations we had a chance to taste the sugar during proccessing.
This is Alfredo Guterreez sipping the sugar malt during the tour. We all sipped a sugar water mixture from this Havoline oil can. This is one of my best pix from the Costa Rican summer of 1977.
