India, April 9 -- Slavery is intimately associated with food production through a historical and, in many cases, contemporary reliance on forced labour to cultivate, harvest, and process high-demand commodities. Historically, it was the backbone of plantation economies producing sugar, cotton, coffee, and tobacco.

Muscovado sugar, a coarse, unrefined sugar rich in molasses, was inseparable from the history of slavery. From the seventeenth century onward, Europe's rising demand for sugar transformed it into a prized commodity, driving the rapid expansion of plantation economies across the Caribbean and Brazil. These plantations depended almost entirely on the forced labour of enslaved Africans. Muscovado produced under these conditions wa...