Sugar with your Tea (Party) ... by gimleteye

It is about time that Tea Party and common sense Republicans considered the arrangements of Big Sugar in Florida that are no longer affordable. Policies that favor growing sugarcane are a pernicious political influence and have been for many decades. The battle to fix the inequities has mostly been carried by environmentalists, but in these hard economic times there should be a real hunger by voters to change policies that cost consumers billions, keeping politicians who favor the crop high on a sickly sugar high. Here are a couple of letters published recently in the Gainesville Sun. It is hard to imagine one crop can do so much damage, and that so much damage has been willingly embraced by Congress and the state legislature. It is time to end the sugar program in the US Farm Bill. The profits of sugar have turned state priorities upside down and inflicted costs on Floridians we can no longer afford.

Mary Barley: Big Sugar and the Everglades
Gainesville Sun
Published: Friday, April 8, 2011

Frank C. Ortis ("Attack on sugar leaves a sour taste") applauded the sugar program in your online edition on April 4. I wonder if he knows the truth about this program. I have spent much of my life working to save the Everglades. Phosphorus from the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) as well as sugar demanding water be wasted to sea continues to be the biggest impediments to a healthy Everglades. Well over half of the EAA’s 700,000 acres is owned by Big Sugar. The sugar program has made Big Sugar very rich. Big Sugar can buy the favors of politicians with ease, and it does just that.

Ortis says that the sugar program “doesn’t cost anything.” How wrong can one be? While our state is in court over pollution of the Everglades, Big Sugar stays put in the EAA, raking in profits and forcing the Army Corps of Engineers along with other state and federal agencies to try to save the Everglades by working around their massive operations and forcing Florida and American taxpayers to foot the bill to clean up its pollution. To date, this is in the billions of dollars and growing more expensive every day. This is the taxpayers bill. (please click, 'read more')
Now, for the consumer costs. Instead of openly writing checks to sugar producers, our government limits domestic production and foreign imports of sugar to keep the price far higher than the world price, a crafty way to hide this massive subsidy to the sugar industry. The sugar program is a price fixing gimmick that saddles U.S. consumers with the bill. It operates as a guaranteed profit right out of the consumers’ pocketbook. In 1998, the U.S. General Accounting Office estimated that consumers and manufactures paid an extra $1.9 billion a year in excess food costs due to the sugar program. Today, it is estimated to be an extra cost in the $4 billion a year range.

Ortis claims that changing the sugar program, as Senator Lugar and others propose, would rob Florida of more than 20,000 jobs, which is questionable given there are no more than 120 sugar cane farms in the state. The fact is that an estimated 112,000 jobs were lost in the U.S. sugar-using industries between 1997 and 2009, as candy makers and bakers closed their U.S. operations entirely due in large part to the outrageous cost of sugar. The time has come to stop this robbery of the consumer and the taxpayer and this assault on America’s Everglades. Congress should enact real reform and kill the sugar program.

Mary Barley, Founder
Everglades Trust
Islamorada


Frank C. Ortis: Attack on sugar leaves a sour taste
Published: Monday, April 4, 2011

For nearly four decades, Indiana Republican Sen. Dick Lugar has been on a solo mission to attack America’s farm policy. By all accounts, it is one of the few government programs working well; in addition to feeding us all, American agriculture supports 21 million jobs and has been credited by the Federal Reserve with kick-starting the nation’s economic recovery. Lugar’s attack is strange considering that farm programs represent less than one percent of federal spending, routinely come in under budget and underpin one of the country’s most important industries. Even stranger is that the sugar program targeted operates without budgetary costs.

It is worse that the Gainesville Sun, in a major farm state, would champion this reckless agenda in its March 26 editorial. Lugar’s most recent attack on sugar policy, for example, would rob Florida of more than 20,000 jobs and $3 billion in annual economic activity. Many jobs in Florida’s sugar industry are unionized with good wages and full benefits. Perhaps Indiana can afford to lose well-paying agricultural jobs, but Florida cannot. And for what? I promise you; it wouldn’t lower our grocery bills one bit. Sugar is a vital but limited ingredient in most foods; the lid on your cup of coffee costs more than the sugar and cream in your coffee.

Gutting a sugar policy that doesn’t cost taxpayers anything (sugar farmers do not receive subsidy checks), harming Florida’s economy, and leaving America subject to the whims of undependable foreign sugar suppliers is bad policy. That might explain why fellow lawmakers have so soundly rejected Lugar’s past attempts…and will likely do so again.
Frank Ortis