Rugelach

In honor of Hanukkah, I made rugelach this week. Having never eaten homemade rugelach, I only had memories of dry, crumbly cookies. But the pandemic has instilled in me a desire to hold on to traditions – even ones I’ve never followed before. These small, crescent-shaped cookies are perfect for cold December evenings. They are flaky, crunchy, and just the right amount of sweet. (I gave some to a 90-year-old friend, Polly, who said they “tasted like Hanukkah.”)

Enough about rugelach – and on to this week’s ingredient: sugar. Sugar comes from both sugarcane and sugar beet. Unfortunately, both supply chains are rife with environmental and labor abuses, including forced and child labor. According to the US Department of Labor, sugarcane and sugar beet are both produced with forced and/or child labor in at least 20 countries across Asia, Africa, and Central and South America.

There are serious problems across the sugar industry, but I want to focus on the Dominican Republic, which exports a lot of sugar to the US. The Fanjul Corporation, a large producer of refined sugar owned by brothers Alfonso and Jose Pepe Fanjul, dominates the US sugar industry. With its subsidiaries, it produces over 7 million tons of sugar each year. This sugar is sold under a variety of brand names, including Domino, C&H, and Florida Crystals. 

Central Romana, a subsidiary of the Fanjul Corporation (the Fanjul brothers are executives of both companies), is one of the most powerful companies in the Dominican Republic. It is the largest private landowner and employer in the country and it produces a lot of the Dominican Republic’s sugar. Yet the working conditions on Dominican sugar plantations are horrendous, as are the living conditions in towns near the plantations, known as bateyes. Whole families live in crumbling shacks that have no running water, no bathrooms, and no electricity. On some plantations, workers are still required to buy goods from the company-owned stores, keeping them in debt – a clear indicator of forced labor. Workers are paid per ton of sugarcane that they cut, but they aren’t always allowed to see the weighing, leaving them at the company’s mercy for how much they are paid. Many workers make just enough money to cover the cost of food.

There is a lot more to say about the sugar industry – including about companies forcibly displacing communities and about the environmental harm caused by growing sugarcane and sugar beets. But that is for future posts. I want to note here that part of the Fanjul brothers’ success in the US is linked to their lobbying and political power, both in Florida and with the federal government. They cover both political parties – one brother is a Democrat while the other is a Republican – and donate large amounts of money to both parties. This has bought them access and allowed them to shape policy.

Sadly, I have nothing positive to end with. I know of no good source for sugar. (But if you do, please let me know!) I’m used to friends pointing out the incongruousness of this blog explaining all the terrible things about an ingredient and then providing a recipe that includes that very ingredient. But the reason I keep writing, even when there is no good consumer option, is that I believe knowledge is itself powerful. It changes how people think about the food system and corporate power and, I hope, leads them to take real action – to lobby their congressmen, write to companies telling them to stop using forced or child labor, and push for strong regulation of corporations. While I try to buy the most ethical foods that I can, what we actually need is large-scale, structural change in the form of powerful laws and regulations that have real teeth and punish companies for violating human rights.

To learn more about the sugar industry, check out this great article on the bateyes in the Dominican Republic. You can also read more about a case that was filed last January against Central Romana for forcibly displacing twenty-four people from their homes in the middle of the night. If you want to learn more about the Fanjul brothers, read this New Yorker article from 2016. You can also watch the Rotten episode on Netflix about sugar.