Trick-or-Treat: Candy Prices vs. Sugar Costs

Ghouls and goblins will soon be haunting your door, looking for a sweet treat to celebrate Halloween! The National Retail Federation forecasts that 96% of American Halloween shoppers will buy candy this Halloween, spending $4.1 billion. Grocery shoppers wanting to stock up will be paying 397% more for a standard chocolate bar than a generation ago – unfortunately, the cost of the sugar in that chocolate bar remains relatively unchanged.

This data comes from an annual survey of grocery store prices conducted by the American Sugar Alliance (ASA). While the 1980s were rad, if we look at prices in this millennium, they’re similarly frightful for farmers.

The sugar in a chocolate bar still only accounts for a couple cents per treat. While American sugarbeet and sugarcane farmers and workers are proud to provide the sugar in your favorite candies, this year has been no treat for farmers.

If subsidized foreign sugar is permitted to continue to flood the market, displacing U.S. production and depressing prices, it will be a nightmare for all Americans as we face the loss of more American sugarbeet and sugarcane farms and factories.

2016 saw the last of Hawaii’s sugarcane production, 2024 saw the last of Texas’ sugarcane production, and 2025 saw the last of California’s sugarbeet production.

The farm families who grow sugarbeets and sugarcane are a critical part of the American food supply.

We can’t let American sugar production become a ghost story.