Sugar workers bicycles at the end of a field of cut cane. on the Caymanas sugar estate. At its peak sugar cane estates in Jamaica employed 50,000 people. But a mixture of privatisation, and the end of EU quotas combined with closure of estates has hit the Jamaican sugar industry hard. In 2003 I had the opportunity of photographing the burning and harvesting of the sugar cane on the then Government owned Caymanas Estate. Using outdated equipment and sugar largely cut by hand in the searing heat, workers make up a substantial number of voters. So successive Jamaican governments have made every effort to keep the industry going. Today, the island economy relies mostly on agriculture and tourism industries. The sugar industry is the oldest continually operating industry in Jamaica, generating the third largest foreign exchange for the island.