back to search results
Less Info

A burning sugarcane field lights up the night sky near Taboga Plantation, a nearly 23-square-mile farm in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Sugarcane growers around the world have used the traditional technique for ages to clear brush, snakes, and spiders the night before harvesting the green cane, when workers with machetes enter the field to cut the stalks by hand. But even modern megafarms like Taboga often burn their fields to allow mechanical harvesters—track-mounted machines that look like something out of Star Wars—to move faster and cut cleaner, with fewer unwanted weeds in the way. Burning fields is a major source of air pollution and lung illnesses, and environmental groups and labor organizations have raised concerns about the sugarcane harvest in Costa Rica and other cane-growing nations.

Filename
STNMTZ_20210106_2092.TIF
Copyright
George Steinmetz
Image Size
6008x4000 / 137.5MB
www.georgesteinmetz.com
Contained in galleries
A burning sugarcane field lights up the night sky near Taboga Plantation, a nearly 23-square-mile farm in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Sugarcane growers around the world have used the traditional technique for ages to clear brush, snakes, and spiders the night before harvesting the green cane, when workers with machetes enter the field to cut the stalks by hand. But even modern megafarms like Taboga often burn their fields to allow mechanical harvesters—track-mounted machines that look like something out of Star Wars—to move faster and cut cleaner, with fewer unwanted weeds in the way. Burning fields is a major source of air pollution and lung illnesses, and environmental groups and labor organizations have raised concerns about the sugarcane harvest in Costa Rica and other cane-growing nations.

All images ©George Steinmetz. Please contact us for usage.