What a sweet tooth –
December 11, 2019 – This year, the government will have to open the spigot and let more foreign sugar into the United States.
In fact, it will be a lot more. In a new report, economists at the Agriculture Department estimate that it will take 3.86 million tons of imported sugar to satisfy the domestic demand for sugar during the current fiscal year, which began in October and runs through September, 2020. Most of the sugar will come from Mexico, because trade agreements give Mexico first dibs on the American market. The U.S. hasn’t imported so much sugar since 1981, back when Americans consumed more sugar and less high-fructose corn syrup.
Frank Jenkins, president of JSG Commodities, who follows sugar markets closely, says this switch to imported sugar will be more complicated than it seems at first. “What we’re trying to replace is refined beet sugar, all in the middle of the country. Minnesota, North Dakota, Colorado, Montana — those states are where we lost all the production,” he says. The sugar that’s replacing it is raw product from sugar cane. It will have to be processed at a handful of refineries in coastal locations such as Savannah, Ga., Baltimore and New York City. Those factories don’t usually have to handle so much sugar. “The cane-refining industry in the United States is going to have to increase its capacity utilization dramatically in the course of the coming year to unprecedented levels,” Jenkins says.
