In the background, behind the rollers, we can see a female figure (nr. 5) carrying the sugar cane on top of her head to the pile of discarded sugar cane. Some of the discarded sugar cane could be dried and used in a fire to boil the sugar, but the used sugar cane did not produce heat long enough to create sugar that was sufficiently dry to be sold on the European market. That is why additional wood was burned to create marketable sugar (nr. 9 shows additional wood being brought to the sugar mill). Places with significantly less trees (e.g. Barbados) produced lower quality sugar than places with more trees (e.g. Brazil).
