On the trail of our sugar cane

Every winter finds us on our travels – we go and see the people who farm our raw ingredients, and we visit Lemonaid & ChariTea Foundation’s social projects. In the winter of 2016, we packed our rucksacks and headed off to Paraguay.

We made our way by pick-up truck to Guarambare, the home of our organically-farmed Fairtrade sugar cane.

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The members of the ASOCAZE cooperative have been farming organically there for more than 15 years. They sell their high-quality raw materials according to strict Fairtrade principles, meaning their family can earn a decent income. This isn’t to be taken for granted in this region, where social inequality and corruption are major problems.

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The farmers once more blew us away with the excellent quality of their sugar cane – and showed us that it’s pretty delicious even just as it comes. It’s a natural snack straight from the fields!

The freshly cut sugarcane tastes is a tasty snack - quite sweet, of course.

This naturally sweet product is harvested from May to November, according to the traditional method – by hand, with a machete.

Almost all sugarcane at ASOCAZE is still being cut by hand with machetes.

The freshly-cut sugar cane is then bundled up and loaded onto the smallholders’ truck with a crane. Then it goes to the mill, “La Felsina”, where the natural sweetness that perfectly rounds off our organic soft drinks comes out.

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Despite the fair pay and lack of exposure to the damaging health consequences of pesticides, the work in the fields in tough and deserves a sweet reward – drinking helps!

After a tough day in the fields - drinking helps.

It was great for us to see that there are alternatives in Paraguay to the dominant exploitation and environmental destruction – and that we support those alternatives with the Lemonaid project.

All photos: ©: Kevin McElvaney