Inside Job: How a Hacker Helped Cocaine Traffickers Infiltrate Europe's Ports

Re:Inside Job: How a Hacker Helped Cocaine Traffickers Infil... by OfSanguineFire on Monday December 04, 2023 @12:17PM (#38520019)

Most sugar in my own backyard originates from beets, but I see I was wrong about it being most sugar worldwide. Wikipedia[0] gives a figure of 30% of world sugar for 2013.

If crude juice is extracted in Brazil and refined in Canada, I’m surprised that it is viewed as cost-effective to transport so much unneeded liquid by sea.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_beet

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Re:Inside Job: How a Hacker Helped Cocaine Traffickers Infil... by Scoundreller on Monday December 04, 2023 @01:56PM (#38521435)

I could be mistaken on the form of sea transit. I just know it gets refined in Canada (which also seems like a waste: why not refine at source?).

Sea transit is cheap, sugarcane grows better in the tropics than beets in cooler places. Harder to harvest below-ground stuff.

Canada used to subsidize/protect sugar beet producers (to keep them competitive), but largely got out of it.

Maybe that’s why we still refine it: because the plants still exist.

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