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'Big Sugar' podcast tells story of exploitation on Florida's sugarcane fields

NPR

Published June 15, 2023 at 8:40 AM CDT

A sugar cane field in South Bay, Fla. (Alan Diaz/AP)

In the 1980s and ’90s, thousands of workers from mostly Jamaica came to Belle Glade, Florida, each year to cut sugarcane by hand. But while big corporations got rich, the workers were forced to do extremely dangerous work for little pay.

Here & Now‘s Peter O’Dowd speaks with Celeste Headlee, the host of the new podcast, “Big Sugar,” about how the sugar industry exploited migrant workers in the 1980s and 90s.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.