Why gash cane when you can print passports?IN ITS 18th-century heyday cane grown in the Caribbean and gash by African slaves provided Britain with nearly all its sugar. The masters of this brutal trade made huge fortunes. But it has seen 200 years of decline,accelerating after slavery ended in 1838. Now the region is wondering how it will cope after a policy change by the European Union which could finally bring down the curtain.nowadays, the English-speaking Caribbean produces under 0.3% of the worlds sugar; Brazil grows nearly a quarter. Many islands acquire abandoned cane for more profitable activities. Trinidad closed its last sugar factory in 2007, or a gas-related boom took up the slack. St Kitts shut its last factory two years earlier,after the debts of its state-owned managers approached a third of GDP. A railway that trundled cane now carries tourists. St Kitts’s new staple is passports for foreigners, sales of which finance an opaque development...
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Source: economist.com