Sir, - Dr Brian Scott of Oxfam Ireland (October 14th) chooses a bad example when he mentions cane sugar as a commodity which, he claims, can be produced more cheaply in poor countries than beet sugar can in developed countries.
Cane sugar has traditionally been produced on huge company or planter-owned estates. Hence the importation of vast numbers of slaves to the West Indies and the American South. After the abolition of slavery it was necessary to import indentured labour from India to the West Indies, Central America and South Africa to work in the cane fields in conditions only slightly better than slavery.
Sugar cane is a highly labour-intensive crop and can compete with beet sugar, which yields much more sucrose per ton, only because labourers on the estates are paid very low wages and are housed in appalling conditions. Companies and individuals owning huge farms grow rich on the backs of exploited workers.
In South Africa the domestic price of sugar has always been kept artificially high to subsidise exports - in a country where most sugar consumers are very poor by anybody's standard.
One must be extremely careful when trading with so-called poor countries. In many instances the beneficiaries of trade in agricultural products are large companies, some of them international, or wealthy farmers. The sorely exploited workforce seldom gains! - Yours, etc.,
Brian P. O Cinneide, Essenwood Road, Durban, South Africa.