| WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- "The American sugar
farmers I work with every day are having a really scary time this
Halloween, with prices they receive for their crop down by almost a third
in the four years of operating under the current Farm Bill," said
Luther Markwart, executive vice president of the American Sugarbeet
Growers Association.
"At the same time," he said, "the big international
manufacturers of sugar-containing products -- from candy makers to bakers
and cereal companies -- continue to raise their prices."
Markwart, who is also chairman of the American Sugar Alliance, a
national coalition of growers, processors and refiners of sugarbeets,
sugarcane and corn for sweetener, cited the latest figures from the Bureau
of Labor Statistics and Department of Agriculture in making his assertion.
"Since the start of the 1996 Farm Bill, the wholesale refined
sugar price has dropped almost 29 percent. The price for raw cane sugar
has declined during this same period by more than 14 percent," he
said.
"The price consumers pay for candy has risen more than 6 percent
during this period. Cereal prices are up almost 7 percent, cookies and
other bakery products are up 8 percent and ice cream prices have climbed
by 10 percent," Markwart said. "Even for sugar on the grocery
store shelf, despite the dramatic one-third plunge in the wholesale price,
the price consumers pay has barely declined at all, a mere
half-a-percentage point," he added.
"What makes this doubly hard to take," Markwart said,
"is that these big companies are the same ones that have tried to
destroy U.S. sugar policy and put American farmers out of business just so
they can fatten their profits even further. Now that's really Halloween
trick or treat. These manufacturers are treating themselves while they are
tricking American consumers and farmers."
For more information on U.S. sugar policy, visit www.sugaralliance.org |