What are the pictures?

The images in the header were taken next to a sugar mill on the island of Maui.  Sugar mills grind and crush sugar cane or sugar beets, extracting the sweet liquid that is boiled down into table sugar; sucrose.  Sugar mills are an icon of the industrial age, the hydrocarbon age.  Back on the mainland, other industrial processes convert glucose syrup squeezed from corn into high fructose corn syrup, the other important sweetener in our food and drink.  This highlights the concept that for better or worse, much of modern food and drink are produced by manufacturing systems, not traditional  methods.  These pictures show the sugar mill and the tools of mechanized agriculture used to harvest and process the sugar cane that feeds the mill.

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