HIST103: World History (1600–Present)

After Columbus' voyages to the Americas, it was soon discovered that certain Old World crops were very well-suited to New World climates. In many cases, the Old World crops were grown much more productively in the New World soils and climates than they were grown back home.

Table 1 indicates in italics Old World crops that today have more than 26 percent of their total production in the New World. We chose a 26 percent cut-off because this is the fraction of arable land located in the Americas. Therefore, the table highlights Old World crops for which a disproportionate share of output (normalized by arable land) is produced in the New World. Because the Americas have 16 percent of the world's population, on a per capita basis as well, these foods are disproportionately produced in the Americas.

The fact that Old World crops flourished in the New World and New World crops flourished in the Old is not just a coincidence. It is, in part, the result of two aspects of the Columbian Exchange. First, both the New World and the Old World contain continents that lie on a North-South orientation and span nearly all degrees of latitude. Because climates change most drastically as one moves North-South rather than East-West, this helped to ensure that New World plants could find an Old World climate similar to their native climate and vice versa. Second, a benefit also arose from the two regions being isolated for thousands of years. The isolation caused separate evolutions of plants, parasites, and pests.

Therefore, transplanted crops often flourished because they were able to escape the pests and parasites that had coevolved with them in their native habitat. Because of the greater preva­lence of pests and parasites in tropical regions, tropical plants benefited most from being transplanted. This benefit partially explains why today, 57 percent of the production of coffee (which originated in the Old World) is produced in the New World and why 98 percent of natural rubber is produced in the Old World from transplanted rubber trees originally from the New World. Numerous other examples of transplanted crops exist. For example, the Americas currently produce 84 percent of the world's soybeans, 65 percent of its oranges, and 35 percent of its bananas.

Sugar Cane

The most striking example of an Old World crop that could be much more effectively cultivated in the New World is sugar cane. Most of the world's land suit­able for sugar cultivation lies in the Americas, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. Sugar cane was first carried to the New World (from the Spanish Canary Islands) on Columbus' second voyage in 1493 and was first cultivated in Spanish Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic). By 1509, enslaved Africans were being imported to the island, and by 1516, sugar was being exported to Europe.

Soon after, the Portuguese also brought sugar cane across the Atlantic, and by 1526, sugar was being exported from Brazil to Lisbon. Beginning in the last two decades of the 16th century, the interests of the Dutch, English, and French also turned to sugar production. Between 1630 and 1660, the Dutch, English, and French began to found their own sugar colonies. The climate in the Americas provided such an advantage to New World sugar producers that by 1680, sugar cane production was dominated by the New World.

One consequence of the large-scale production of sugar in the Americas was that, for the first time in human history, there was a large enough supply of the commodity that it could be consumed by the commoner in Europe. In England, the annual per capita consumption of sugar increased by 20-fold between 1663 and 1775, and it increased a further five-fold between 1835 and 1935. Sugar, providing a cheap and easy source of calories for the growing urban working class in Europe, was first consumed in tea and other hot drinks. During the 19th century, sugar consumption further increased as processed foods – such as jams, cakes and biscuits, canned vegetables and fruits, relishes, and white bread – became more common.

It is hard to overstate the importance of sugar for the European masses. Hersh and Voth estimate that the increase in sugar availability between 1600 and 1850 increased English welfare by an amazing eight percent. Anthropologist Sidney Mintz even goes so far as to put forth a hypothesis about the importance of sugar for creating an industrial working class in the United Kingdom. He writes that sugar, "by provisioning, sating – and, indeed, drugging – farm and factory workers, sharply reduced the overall cost of creating and reproducing the metropolitan proletariat."

Today, as shown in Panel B of Table 3, Brazil is the world's largest supplier of sugar cane. Other New World countries that are also top producers include Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, and the United States. Global production of sugar cane in 2000 was 1,252 million tonnes. Of this, 45 percent was produced in the Americas, with Latin America and the Caribbean accounting for 94 percent of the New World production.