Last weekend's Super Bowl performance is already being hailed as one of the best ever. Preliminary estimates also show it to be one of the most watched – with around 130 million viewers.

And it all begins with a panoramic video of a huge sugar cane field, with people dressed in white in straw hats working with machetes between rows of sugar cane.

But why sugarcane?

The artist Bad Bunny comes from Puerto Rico, where sugarcane cultivation was long one of the most important crops. During much of the colonial period and until the mid-20th century, it dominated the island's economy. At the same time, sugarcane plantations in the Caribbean are historically intimately linked to colonialism and the slave trade, as European colonial powers built large plantations using slave labour to produce sugar for export.

By turning the Super Bowl stadium into a sugarcane field, Bad Bunny is doing something that few other global stars have done before him: He is highlighting manual agriculture – which is a central part of the economy and history of many countries – as a heritage to be proud of.

An uplifting break from the consumer culture that otherwise wants us to ignore where, how and by whom our food is produced.

So, where is sugarcane grown?

Sugarcane is a hardy and adaptable crop that thrives in warm, humid climates – especially in tropical and subtropical regions. That is why sugarcane is grown in large parts of Asia, Africa – and Latin America.

Today, Brazil is the world's largest producer of sugarcane, while it has more or less stopped being grown in Puerto Rico.

How is sugarcane grown?

Sugarcane is often grown in large-scale monocultures, where the same crop grows over large fields year after year. Monocultures can produce high yields – but they are also more susceptible to diseases and pests because of low biodiversity. In appearance, the sugarcane plantation in Bad Bunny’s halftime show is strikingly similar to real-life sugarcane plantations, with long, symmetrical rows of the tall, grass-like plant. Sugarcane is also often harvested manually using machetes, as illustrated by the hat-clad dancers. However, in Brazil and other major producing countries, mechanical harvesting is also used, depending on the region and farming system.

...And who grows sugar cane?

Sugarcane is grown on both a small and large scale – but globally industrial production dominates. This means that large, multinational companies employ labor to harvest the cane. This was also the case in Puerto Rico until the latter part of the 20th century, when it declined sharply. Large-scale sugar production is still associated with slave-like conditions, forced labor, and child labor.

In some countries, however, small-scale production dominates – where growers join together in cooperatives and own both the land and parts of the processing chain themselves. These are the organisations that Fairtrade certifies, and they often mean better working conditions, greater influence for growers and more sustainable farming methods.

Globally, Fairtrade includes more than 38,000 small-scale sugar farmers in Fairtrade-certified cooperatives, according to 2023 statistics.

One of them is Melanio Alfaro in Costa Rica:

“Growing sugarcane is a challenge. It's not easy, and the costs of what we need have increased a lot. But thanks to the Fairtrade premium, we get an extra bonus on top of the price, which has also increased recently,” says Melanio Alfaro.