Knowledge Check: Sugar

1. Sugar comes from two different plants. Which pair is correct?

Two kinds of tropical treeA cactus and a vineCorn and wheatSugar cane, a tropical grass, and sugar beet, a temperate root

2. Why did sugar cane plantations need a mill on site and a fast, total harvest?

Cut cane spoils within about 24 hours, so it must be pressed almost immediatelyCane must be frozen before pressingThe law required on-site millsCane is too heavy to move at all

3. How does sugar beet differ from sugar cane in storage and water use?

Beet can be stored for months and uses about half the waterBeet cannot be stored at allThey are identical in bothBeet spoils faster and needs more water

4. Which country grows the most sugar, about 20 percent of the world's supply?

The United StatesCubaFranceBrazil

5. How does the United States make its sugar?

Entirely from beetEntirely from caneAbout 55 percent from beet in the north and 45 percent from cane in the south, divided by the frost lineIt imports all of its sugar

6. What does it mean that a Caribbean sugar island was a monocrop economy?

It grew no crops at allIt grew exactly one of every cropAlmost all its land and labor went to a single crop, cane, replacing forests and food farmsIt rotated many crops each year

7. Which colony was the most profitable in the world by 1789?

BarbadosSaint-Domingue, now HaitiCubaBrazil

8. Where and roughly when was sugar cane first grown?

England, around 1700New Guinea, around 8000 BCEBrazil, around 1000 CEThe Caribbean, around 1500 CE

9. Who brought sugar cane to the New World, and in what year?

Cortes, in 1519The Aztec, in 1345Columbus, in 1493The British, in 1640

10. What was the triangular trade?

A three-leg Atlantic loop: goods to Africa, enslaved people to the Americas, and sugar back to EuropeA deal among three sugar companiesA three-day shipping scheduleA trade route between three European cities