Searching for Stability

Abstract This article analyzes the revitalization of Jamaica's sugar industry in the first half of the twentieth century and the overall shift in agricultural focus from bananas back to sugar in the context of the effects of the banana blight known as Panama disease. It argues that Panama disease and the response of small and large farmers to it, as well as weather events and changes in global markets, led growers to switch from banana to sugar cultivation. Afro-Jamaican smallholders led the shift to sugar in the 1910s, as they were the first to grapple with Panama disease in Jamaica. By the mid-1920s Panama disease had reached large banana plantations as well, and many planters, like smallholders a decade prior, responded by turning their plantations into sugar, rather than banana, monocultures. By the end of World War II, as a result of Panama disease, along with transformations in the sugar industry that came in the wake of the disease's spread, sugar had once more become Jamaica's primary agricultural export. Examining the Jamaican sugar industry as part of the history of Panama disease highlights that plant diseases affect much more than the specific crop they infect. Rather, they can have significant ramifications for other crops and the associated industries that make up the broader agroecosystems.