Knowledge Check: Sugar

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

Sugar cane, a tropical grass, and sugar beet, a temperate rootTwo kinds of tropical treeA cactus and a vineCorn and wheat

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 is too heavy to move at allThe law required on-site millsCane must be frozen before pressing

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 spoils faster and needs more waterBeet cannot be stored at allThey are identical in both

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

BrazilThe United StatesFranceCuba

5. How does the United States make its sugar?

About 55 percent from beet in the north and 45 percent from cane in the south, divided by the frost lineEntirely from caneEntirely from beetIt imports all of its sugar

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

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

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

Saint-Domingue, now HaitiBarbadosCubaBrazil

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

New Guinea, around 8000 BCEThe Caribbean, around 1500 CEEngland, around 1700Brazil, around 1000 CE

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

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

10. What was the triangular trade?

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