America’s Sugarbeet and Sugarcane Farmers Need a Farm Bill Now

By Dr. Rob Johansson for the Hagstrom Report

A sustainable supply of made-in-America sugar benefits everyone, and the sugar policy provisions proposed in the next Farm Bill will strengthen our domestic sugar industry. It’s time for Congress to pass a bipartisan, highly effective Farm Bill. Waiting any longer would be a mistake.

Because of American farm families, like our sugarbeet and sugarcane farm families, we have the most abundant and diverse food supply in world. And thanks to U.S. sugar policy, we do not have sugar shortages. Even during the peak of COVID-19, when other industries dealt with catastrophic supply chain failures, American food manufacturers and candy companies had sugar delivered to keep production lines humming and, just as with food manufacturers, American households could always find sugar on the shelves for home baking projects. This year, American sugar producers are expecting to produce a record amount of sugar. Thanks to U.S. sugar policy, America always has efficient access to sugar.

Our farmers are dealing with higher input costs, just like American families are dealing with higher costs at the grocery store. Wholesale prices for sugar have declined year-over-year, while the retail price — a price determined not by our farmers, but by grocery stores — has increased. Even as the prices our farmers receive for the crops they work so hard to grow are declining, they are still dealing with near record high input costs. Two well-respected experts from Louisiana State University and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville analyzed the escalating costs of production for sugarbeet and sugarcane farmers and found that the cost of planting, cultivating, and harvesting sugarbeets and sugarcane have drastically increased by more than 30% since the last Farm Bill.

America’s sugar producers are committed to always providing American food manufacturers and consumers with affordable and available sugar. But our farmers and others across the country need a stronger safety net in order to keep feeding America. Even before the recent economic downturn, farms and farmland were leaving America. Between 2017 and 2022, 141,733 farms left agriculture, and more than 20 million acres of farmland were lost.

It’s time to pass a Farm Bill that provides our farmers and workers with a supportive safety net, maintains our resilient supply chains, and allows our farmers and workers to continue meeting the needs of American families. Any efforts to weaken U.S. sugar policy and allow more heavily subsidized foreign-made sugar to enter our market unchecked would put American family farmers out of business and jeopardize our nation’s food security. America cannot afford to be left without a reliable, domestic supply of this essential ingredient.