SUGAR has historically formed the mainstay of Guyana’s economy, and the story of sugar in Guyana interweaves this nation’s past, present and, indisputably, its future. The arrival of most races of the Guyanese nationhood is only because of the sugar industry of Guyana.Christopher Columbus sailed off the Guiana coast on his third voyage in 1498, with subsequent visits by Spanish explorers Alonzo de Ojeda and Juan de La Casa in l499, followed by Vincent Juan Pirizon in 1500 and, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Amerigo Vespucci, a skilled geographer and navigator, after whom the Americas were named.
Sir Walter Raleigh of England also voyaged to the New World in l595, which gave rise to the legendary story of ‘El Dorado’; but it was the Dutch who established the first European Settlement in 1580 on the banks of the Pomeroon River, and in l6l6 a trading post on the banks of the Essequibo River, from which they exported to Europe indigenous goods they bartered for from the aboriginal tribes, mainly the Warraus (thought to have occupied these lands since before 900 AD), the Caribs and the Arawaks.  However, in the early l650s, the Dutch extended their agricultural interests in the indigenous annatto and indigo to cultivating coffee and cotton, before their interests turned to sugar.
During the second half of the seventeenth century, the Dutch began land reclamation on the coastal territories, and their network of dams, kokers and drainage systems is the most impactful and, if efficiently maintained, enduring Dutch legacy on Guyana’s landscape.  Agricultural activity was then shifted mainly to the coastal plains, and in order to achieve product availability in commercial quantities, the Dutch West India Company began to supply the colonists with African slaves.
Sugar cane cultivation began on and around the island of Kyk-Over-Al by the Dutch, who had first set up factories in Brazil, after having discovered the most effective way to extract, boil, and crystallize the juice of the cane.
The use of primitive mills, consisting of two wooden rollers turned by hand, gave way to efficient steel mills by l664.  One of the earlier steel mills, which is still fully functional, is on display in Port Mourant near the entrance of GuySuCo’s Training School.
By l769, Demerara had a total of 206 plantations and 5,907 slaves; Essequibo had 92 plantations and 3,986 slaves; and Berbice, the last county to be colonised, had only five estates with a number of trading posts up the Canje Creek.
In l747, the Dutch had opened up the area near the Demerara River to British immigrants.  By l760, the British constituted a majority of the population of Demerara, and war broke out between the Netherlands and Britain in l781, resulting in British occupation of the three counties.  The Dutch allied with the French and regained control of the colonies a few months later, with the French being the predominant administrators.  The Dutch regained power in l784, and the colonies changed hands several times before being finally conquered by the British in l803, and ceded formally by the Dutch to the British in l814.  The British then unified the three counties into the colony of British Guiana in l831.
The Abolition of Slavery Act was passed in Parliament on August 29, l833 and came into effect on August 1, 1834.  A period of apprenticeship allowed the planters breathing space to find alternative sources of cheap labour.
The newly-freed slaves, showing indifference to field work, began an exodus from plantations in order to plant cash crops.  This consequenced sugar exports falling by 30%.
The temperament of the indigenous population was not conducive to the discipline of plantation life, and after unsuccessfully trying in various ways to acquire cheap, docile, and agresic replacement labour from Madeira, China, and even free Africans, they arranged for the introduction of an indentured workforce from India.
On the 5th and 6th May, 1838 the Whitby and the Hesperus landed 396 “bound coolies”, who were described as “a docile, quiet, orderly, and able-bodied people.”
The Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) was established in l976 when the Guyana Government nationalised and merged the sugar estates operated by Booker Sugar Estates Ltd and Jessels Holdings.
The Corporation is the largest single employer in Guyana, with a workforce of approximately 30,000 employees.
Sugar formerly accounted for approximately 20% of the GDP, and 40% of national agricultural production.  It was the largest earner of retained foreign exchange in Guyana.  In l995, when foreign exchange earned from sugar represented 5% of export earnings, in that year GuySuCo earned $20.2 billion before sugar levy.  The surplus after tax and sugar levy was $3.6 billion, and profit after tax and sugar levy was $3200 million. This status changed with the re-structuring of the EU sugar protocol, which decimated the industry’s earnings and plunged the industry’s viability into a morass of struggle.
Currently, the Corporation’s operations are conducted on eight grinding estates along the coastal belt.  These are Skeldon, Rose Hall, Albion/Port Mourant, and Blairmont in the county of Berbice; and Enmore, LBI/Diamond, Uitvlugt/Leonora, and Wales in the county of Demerara.

Considerable emphasis continues to be placed on proper management of the environment on sugar estates.  Sustainable development is the watchword of GuySuCo’s farming and production systems.  In late March/early April of l995 a Canadian company, Ecologistics International Ltd, carried out an environmental audit of the industry under the aegis of the World Bank. However, the climate change phenomenon has wreaked havoc in Guyana’s agriculture sector and husbandry has had to adapt and adopt different practices in efforts to mitigate the effects that have proven, added to the new EU price dispensation, extremely deleterious to the sugar industry in Guyana.
The Government, however, refuses to give up on the sector, claiming it is too big to fail because the lives and livings of tens of thousands of Guyanese depend – directly and indirectly, on the production of sugar, around which many communities were established and upon which those communities depend on for survival. (Base information provided by GuySuCo)