Short answers, pulled from the story.
Sugarcane was first domesticated by Papuan people in New Guinea around 6,000 years before the present. This tall, jointed grass was selectively bred to produce stalks rich in sucrose and served as a vital food source for domesticated pigs.
The earliest known production of crystalline sugar began in northern India 2,500 years ago. Evidence for this production appears in ancient Sanskrit and Pali texts from that period.
The first sugar harvest in the Americas occurred in 1501 on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Christopher Columbus brought the crop to the region during his second voyage, and sugar mills were constructed in Cuba and Jamaica by the 1520s.
Between 1863 and 1900, merchants and plantation owners in Queensland and New South Wales brought between 55,000 and 62,500 people from the South Pacific islands. An estimated one-third of these workers were coerced or kidnapped into slavery in a practice known as blackbirding.
Gasoline in Brazil is required to contain at least 22% bioethanol sourced from the country's large sugarcane crop. This ethanol production is more energy efficient than that from corn, sugar beets, or palm vegetable oils.
At least 20,000 people are estimated to have died of chronic kidney disease in the past two decades among sugarcane workers along the Pacific coast of Central America. This condition is linked to working long hours in the heat without adequate fluid intake.