The Price of Sugar

When Father Christopher Hartley, a charismatic priest, arrives in the Dominican Republic, he is warned not to enter the sugar cane plantations where most of his parishioners live. Breaking a centuries-old taboo, he discovers shocking examples of modern slavery intrinsic to the global sugar trade. On an island known for its tropical beauty, tourists flock to the beaches to escape winter and relax, with little knowledge that just a few kilometres away dispossessed Haitians are toiling away on unseen plantations, harvesting sugar cane, most of which ends up in the United States.

On an island known for tropical beauty, tourists flock to escape winter and relax with little knowledge that just a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians are toiling away in unseen plantations harvesting sugarcane most of which ends up in the United States. Cutting cane by machete, they work 12 hour days, 7 days a week frequently without access to decent housing, electricity, clean water, education, healthcare and adequate nutrition. Often they are stateless, with neither Dominican nor Haitian identity and virtually invisible in the eyes of the law.

"The Price of Sugar" raises key questions about where the products we consume originate, at what cost they are produced and ultimately, where our responsibility lies.