Big Sugar and The Miami Herald

I'm sorry. It is such a conditioned reaction of mine, to read the New York Times and wonder: why in the world wasn't this opinion or news report first printed in The Miami Herald?

The collapse of the paper's news coverage of Big Sugar and its effect on the environment and landscape is tragic. It is almost as though The Miami Herald has given up.

When Martha Musgrove wrote for The Miami Herald editorial page, she was a bull dog on coverage of the Everglades. Following her resignation from the paper as associate editor in 2001, after 35 years, the subject area was virtually abandoned by the editorial page as though it had never existed. That's tragic, for a newspaper whose history is so intertwined with Marjorie Stoneman Douglas.

By 2001, Miami and its suburbs was swept up the housing boom. Perhaps the paper's executives believed that the Everglades had been "solved", or, that there was no point in irritating a popular governor from Miami, Jeb Bush, who had gone his own way on the Everglades, arguing that no one else (ie. environmentalists) knew what they were talking about. Just let us get the job done. Just let the benefits of building to the edge of the Everglades take care of itself.

And then, too, there was the fact that when President Bill Clinton came to Miami, he either stayed with or arranged to spend time on the golf course with his buddy, Alfie Fanjul. And, that Senator Bob Graham was--for his entire career--a strong supporter of whatever Big Sugar wanted, notwithstanding his claim to be father of Everglades protection.

Big Sugar, of course, employed legions of attorneys and consultants and lobbyists in Miami-Dade County over the decades. These Indian chieftains became powerful community leaders in their own right--at Miami churches and synagogues, for instance--and soon enough, so many college educations and braces were paid for with the largesse of Big Sugar's fees, that pressure built in Miami, to say nothing or as little as possible. (This accounts, for the fact too, that PBS in the Palm Beaches and Greater Miami area always sugar-coated its coverage of the Everglades.)

Big Sugar has always entertained a special relationship with the Cuban American political elite in Miami. One of Jorge Mas Canosa's first businesses, for instance, was selling farm equipment to sugar farmers in Okeechobee.

Over the decades, Big Sugar has had its finger in any governmental effort, whether state or federal like the creation of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, that might be considered to advance the cause of limiting development.

Along with their public relations firm, Wragg and Casas (Joanna Wragg was a long-time Herald executive), Big Sugar has exerted a powerful influence in Miami: the Herald is only one example.

The Orlando Sentinel, the Palm Beach Post (especially), and other smaller papers have done a better job of documenting Big Sugar's influence in the Everglades and on the South Florida landscape. And today, the New York Times.

Here is today's editorial from the Times:

October 30, 2007
Editorial
Sugar’s Sweetheart Deal

Of all the government’s farm-support programs, there are few as egregious as the tangle of loans, quotas and import tariffs set up to protect the well-connected club of American sugar producers at the expense of American consumers and farmers in the developing world. This year’s farm bill will add American taxpayers to the list of casualties.

Under the current system, the government guarantees a price floor for sugar and limits the sugar supply — placing quotas on domestic production and quotas and tariffs to limit imports. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, sugar supports cost American consumers — who pay double the average world price — more than $1.5 billion a year. The system also bars farmers in some of the poorest countries of the world from selling their sugar here.

The North American Free Trade Agreement is about to topple this cozy arrangement. Next year, Mexican sugar will be allowed to enter the United States free of any quotas or duties, threatening a flood of imports. Rather than taking the opportunity to untangle the sugar program in this year’s farm bill, Congress has decided to bolster the old system.

Both the House bill, which was passed in July, and the Senate version, which could be voted on as early as this week, guarantee that the government will buy from American farmers an amount of sugar equivalent to 85 percent of domestic consumption — regardless of how much comes in from abroad. To add insult to injury, both also increase the longstanding price guarantee for sugar.

The bills encourage the government to operate the program at no cost to the budget, by selling the surplus sugar to the ethanol industry. That’s not likely. Ethanol makers will never accept paying anywhere near sugar’s guaranteed price. According to rough estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, supports for sugar in the House bill could cost taxpayers from $750 million to $850 million over the next five years.

Big Sugar is not the only beneficiary of this corporate welfare. The farm bill is larded with subsidies and other rewards for agricultural producers. The eagerness of members of Congress to please their sugar daddies is not surprising. Campaign donations from the sugar industry have topped $3 million in each of the last four political cycles. American consumers and taxpayers, as well as poor farmers overseas, shouldn’t have to pay the price.

President Bush has been on the right side of the debate over farm subsidies. Big Sugar’s sweet deal gave him another good reason to veto the farm bill if it doesn’t cut back on all the goodies.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company