The Empire Marketing Board was established in 1926 in order to encourage the British public to buy Empire products. A major part of its activities was a poster campaign directed by Frank Pick who had overseen a similar - and highly successful - scheme for London Underground. Over 800 designs were published by the Board before it was abolished in 1933, most as posters for hoardings or shop window displays.

Good design was considered essential to ensuring public impact and the Board took great trouble in selecting artists and designs. Contributing artists included some of the biggest names in fine and graphic arts of the time including Paul Nash, Gerald Spencer Pryse and Edward McKnight Kauffer, amongst others. Innovative and often highly modernist, the poster designs reflected increasing levels of sophistication in the design and reception of British commercial art.

This poster was designed by Frank Newbould, probably as part of a series illustrating the ‘reciprocity of trade between Britain and the overseas Empire’. Sugar cane production in the West Indies had long been associated with the use of enslaved African labour but this image appears to recast it as a conventional agricultural scene, with a visual emphasis on the bright clothing of the workers and bold shapes formed by the cane.