Big Sugar

I am fond of saying Florida is a state of subtleties and people think I'm nuts. This state is home to Florida Man the mythical bumbling fool who makes pratfalls look cool. We all know Florida has outstanding beaches, massive condo towers that dominate them, pollution to beat the band and Spring Break better than anyone. And now with travel shut down all I have is photos to look at...

The parts I have learned to like about Florida are the bits that look like mangroves in the keys and cowboy country around Immokalee and Arcadia home of livestock shows and rodeos. I like the surprises that Central Florida can inflict on people who think that watching TV is a substitute for exploring for yourself.

The tall wavy grass is sugarcane, miles and miles of  n agricultural mono-culture as controversial as it is sweet. Sugar is grown in Florida thanks to government subsidy, one of those welfare programs that don't get much notice when life sustaining welfare is cut by government edict. Thanks to the Sugar Act of 1934  tax dollars support this industry to the tune of around 3 billion dollars a  year. 

The industry imports workers form the Caribbean to do back breaking labor harvesting the stuff in conditions you can hardly imagine in the south Florida heat. Sugar is grown in soft soil and machinery can't do the work of men dressed in armor (no kidding) hacking at the cane with machetes all day every day. The harvest is back breaking and it gets done because there is no work in Jamaica and elsewhere to the south of us.

I took this picture below to illustrate the point. Sugar need annual fertilization as  the cane sucks the nutrients out of the soil. Water requirements are massive and the runoff into Florida Bay is (allegedly they tell us) responsible for coral reef die off. 

Driving through the Everglades I like to stop and feel the breeze blowing in this place so unlike the place where I live. Rusty thought it was pretty cool too.

 As you look at these pictures that are not of the Keys you may see the beauty that I see or may not.

It's not mountains and valleys or long scenic vistas but it is a place that needs to be allowed to revert to its original function as  a marsh to clean the fresh water flowing through the state.

Then to clean the fields of sugar they burn the old stalks destroying everything burning wildlife and filling the sky with smoke and ash. It happens every year and looks like this:

 And this is about as exciting as a motorcycle ride gets around here:

And if you want long straight roads you don't have to go to Alaska around here they are flat as well, to the horizon.

Small brown dogs can find the grasses interesting but I have known Rusty to not like what he finds in these mysterious marshy places and turn tail and run to me without explanation.

As pretty and as vast as these marshes are it is not an urban myth that large tropical snakes have been released here by inconsiderate pet owners and they have populated these spaces in the manner of a horror story.

They look beautiful to my eye these open plains, but the horror lurks out of sight...!

Cuban 'Cane Burning

My colleague Belen relieved me at work yesterday taunting me by telling me she is scheduled to take a ten day vacation to Cuba next week. "I'm Cuban American" she gave as the reason for her jaunt to the forbidden isle under new relaxed Obama rules for travel to the godless communists' worker's paradise. I've previously taunted her that I've been to Cuba (by accident, by sailboat briefly) and she hasn't. The tables are turned. But it gives me high hopes the embargo will be lifted sooner rather than later and the Bonneville and I will take to the Cuban twisties. On a related note there are some people who notice the smell of burning in the air and last night we had a related call for service about a "smell of burning." The consensus was that it's sugar cane burning season in Cuba and the winds are strong and out of the south...

This is a photograph of sugar cane fields south of Lake Okeechobee, with a processing plant in the distance, that I took on a motorcycle ride last year in May. The cane fields are burned every year to clear out debris (and unhappily the wild animals that live in it). Then the ash filled fields are cut usually by hand with men, Jamaicans normally in South Florida, armed with machetes. It is grueling work exacerbated by the ash clogged debris from the burning. Big Sugar is a disastrous environmental industry supported rather quaintly by a multi billion dollar subsidy from the federal Government, but as nothing compared to the banksters and re-insurance mobsters these days.

As a result the skies sometimes get hazy and the wood fire smell permeates the islands and we have to rouse the fire department at all hours to go out and look for flames, because one can never take the risk of ignoring a potential fire. One day I'd like to ride the Cuban cane fields and see how they burn theirs. The smell of smoke, not of cigars this time, is a geographic reminder of how close and how far we are from Cuba.