# Book review: The World of Sugar by Ulbe Bosma IELTS Academic Reading - 14 questions - 20 minutes - Multiple choice, Summary completion (word list), Yes / No / Not Given Source: Passage, questions and answer key from Cambridge IELTS 21, Test 1, Reading Passage 3. © Cambridge University Press & Assessment. Used for educational practice. Explanations and evidence notes are written by Testmigo. ## The passage You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below. Ulbe Bosma's The World of Sugar is a genuinely global history. Bosma discusses all the sugar-growing places of the world, beginning with Cuba and Java, the largest exporters of the early 20th century. But this is a history not just of cane sugar but also of beet sugar, an equally important form of traded sugar over the last hundred years. Beet sugar is grown mainly in Europe and the United States. It has also been massively subsidised and sold at artificially low prices on world markets, threatening the livelihood of producers of cane sugar. Bosma's discussion of the sugar market in Britain gives a sense of the book's range. The sweet-toothed British first bought cane sugar from their own slavery-dependent colonial plantations. Following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, cane sugar was imported to Britain from places which retained the practice, such as Cuba and Brazil. Towards the end of the 19th century, the British started to import beet sugar from continental Europe. Only in the 20th century was there a move to develop a national beet sugar industry. The book provides a global labour history, investigating the wide range of labour regimes associated with growing sugar. Contrary to popular belief, cane sugar production was never just restricted to large, dedicated plantations owned by rich men. For example, in Java, a huge exporter of sugar in the early 20th century, sugar cane was grown together with rice in an extraordinarily labour-intensive way by small farmers. The World of Sugar is also a story of similarity and continuity in sugar cultivation. For example, imported labour has been used for much large-scale production. German beet fields employed Polish workers; Mexicans and many others, including Sicilians, were vital to US sugar production. Cane cutting, Bosma shows, remains a poorly paid and brutal business to this day in many places in the world. But as well as this, the book is about the continuity of the use of traditional methods on small farms. In the mid 20th-century, this type of sugar production dominated in South Asia and Latin America. This is also a history of capitalists and sugar dynasties, as well as corporations that in some cases have remained influential over very long periods. Great firms and great interests have had profound influence on the policies of states. In many places - not just the British Caribbean but Cuba and the Philippines too - a powerful sugar bourgeoisie played a major role in politics and their interests were consequently protected by trade barriers and subsidies. In the battle for control of the industry, it was inevitably the poor countries which came off worse. All this is explored by Bosma with wonderful subtlety and control. But sugar production was never just a matter of agriculture. It also involved the extraction, close to the place of harvest, of sucrose from the sugar plant, a process which required machinery powered by humans, animals, wind or steam. Further processes involved boiling (from the 19th century, this often involved vacuum systems) and the separation of sugar from other materials in a process known as refinement. From very early on, sugar production was an energy-intensive industrial process, mostly taking place in the countryside and in refineries in centres of consumption, both small and large. The growth of the industry entailed a very rapid diffusion of ideas and techniques from one country to another. Cuba, for example, developed an extraordinarily dense system of railways to transport workers and cane, as well as steam-powered sugar factories. Particular varieties of cane sugar and beet sugar spread very rapidly across the world, in accordance with local needs and demands. Where once only tiny quantities of sugar could be produced, now new techniques, varieties, fertilisers, irrigation systems and much more have turned gleaming white sugar into a ubiquitous chemical. Over the same time, there has been a massive increase in consumption. Once regarded as a luxury, sugar came to be promoted as a valuable source of energy. But as the consumption of sugar has increased, so has the harm it does, whether to people's teeth or weight. In the face of appalling obstruction from the sugar industry to attempts to reduce consumption, some countries have been forced to tax sugar in order to bring that about. The sugar industry has a history of attacking its critics and, when it comes to obesity, of trying to blame fats, and lack of exercise and self-control. And the recent past has seen worrying new developments in mass sweetening. High-fructose corn syrup made from maize using an enzymatic process invented in Japan in the 1960s has a similar number of calories to table sugar but is far cheaper to produce. It is now widely consumed, having been adopted in the making of soft drinks and a large number of processed foods, and is regarded as a leading cause of obesity. This is a wonderfully rich book, a model of global history, the history of production and the history of capitalism. Bosma avoids outbursts of emotion, celebratory or critical, even if they might have made his analysis of the multiple tragedies involving sugar all the more powerful. He shows that we could always have done without sugar and that today we have many alternative sources of sweetness. Yet many of the poorest people in the world still depend on it to make a living. ## Questions ### Questions 27-30: Multiple choice Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. 27. What does the reviewer suggest about the cultivation and trading of sugar in the first paragraph? - A. Sugar has played a major role in international relations. - B. Beet sugar has been made more internationally competitive. - C. Cane sugar is thought to be of superior quality to beet sugar. - D. New locations for cultivating sugar have increased production. 28. In the second paragraph, when discussing the sugar market in Britain, the reviewer stresses - A. how the sources used changed over time. - B. how developments in agriculture affected trade. - C. the increased demand for sugar over the years. - D. the growing support for ethical methods of cultivation. 29. What is the reviewer doing in the third paragraph? - A. describing an efficient approach to sugar cultivation - B. explaining why the use of sugar plantations declined - C. addressing a misconception about the growing of cane - D. evaluating different approaches to the cultivation of sugar cane 30. In the final paragraph, what does the reviewer suggest is the overall message of Bosma's book? - A. Sugar is a harmful and unnecessary product. - B. Economic pressure is needed to control sugar production. - C. Conditions for workers in sugar production should be improved. - D. Intensive marketing of sugar has had disastrous consequences. ### Questions 31-36: Summary completion (word list) Complete the summary using the list of phrases, A-I, below. - **A** national governments - **B** agricultural developments - **C** less wealthy nations - **D** untrained workers - **E** small-scale cultivation - **F** outdated methods - **G** financial controls - **H** migrant workers - **I** powerful individuals and businesses Sugar cultivation and production The book The World of Sugar points out the similarities in the way that sugar was cultivated around the world. In the big industries in both Germany and the US, sugar farming depended on **(31)** _____. However, in other parts of the world such as South Asia and Latin America, **(32)** _____ continued. Sugar production has also involved **(33)** _____ who were eager to protect their markets. In countries such as Cuba the sugar industry therefore had a major influence on **(34)** _____. To support the interests of sugar producers, **(35)** _____ were established. As a result of this, **(36)** _____ were penalised. ### Questions 37-40: Yes / No / Not Given Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3? Choose YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer, NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer, or NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this. 37. Sugar has now become available in large quantities due to a range of agricultural developments. 38. Advertisers initially marketed sugar as a luxury product. 39. The invention of high-fructose corn syrup was a positive development. 40. High-fructose corn syrup is an ingredient in many processed foods. 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