| FARGO, N.D. (AP) - Low sugar prices will lead to lower
payments to Red River Valley sugar beet growers this year, says Jim
Horvath, president and chief executive officer of the American Crystal
Sugar Co.
The company's grower payments will be about $10 per ton less than
average, he said. That amounts to $100 million that will not be coming
into the valley, which will generate an overall economic impact of $250
million, he said.
The lower payments put many growers on the ``ragged edge'' of barely
being able to break even, Horvath said.
He said American Crystal expects to make average gross per-ton payments
of $31.50, or about $680 per acre. Last year, the payments were $37.31 per
ton, or about $741 per acre.
The company harvested 9.6 million tons of sugar beets this year, about
the same as last year, he said.
Horvath said sugar prices have been forced down by a glut of the
commodity caused by high imports and increased domestic production.
Some of the sugar comes from Canada through ``stuffed molasses.'' Sugar
is added to molasses and shipped to the United States, where it is refined
out of the molasses to avoid trade quotas, Horvath said.
Sugar industry officials hope a court challenge will stop the practice,
he said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is holding between 750,000 and
800,000 excess tons of sugar, Horvath said.
Some of the surplus could be used to process corn into ethanol, said
Craig Halfmann, president of the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers
Association.
Recent tests at the Minnesota Energy ethanol plant in Buffalo Lake
found adding sugar can speed up ethanol production, resulting in the use
of more sugar and corn, according to the American Coalition for Ethanol.
Halfmann, who farms near Stephen, Minn., said sugar growers have asked
Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman to consider using surplus sugar in
ethanol production.
The federal Payment In Kind Diversion Program sought to strengthen
sugar prices by allowing sugar beet growers the choice of taking some of
their crop out of production.
Minnesota ranked first among states in PIK diversions, with 36,370
acres taken out of production. North Dakota and South Dakota were ranked
together in second place, with more than 16,587 acres in the program, USDA
said.
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SPRINGFIELD, Ohio (AP) - While Ohio is one of the nation's largest
consumers of ethanol-blended fuels, it imports 100 percent of what it uses
from other states.
That may be about to change.
Numerous sites around Ohio have been identified as possible locations
for a plant that would produce ethanol - a corn-based fuel additive.
``Exporting corn and importing ethanol simply makes no sense,'' said
Mike Wagner, executive director of the Ohio Corn Marketing Program.
Kent Eddy, the program's board chairman, called Ohio one of the most
logical places in the United States to build an ethanol plant.
``The state benefits from reduced imports of gasoline, the rural
economy benefits from increased use of corn, and we can all breathe
cleaner air,'' he said.
The United States counts at least 56 ethanol producing facilities.
The plant envisioned for Ohio is a relatively small 20-million gallon
per year facility.
On the Net:
The Sugar Association: http://www.sugar.org
American Sugarbeet Growers Association: http://hometown.aol.com/asga
American Coalition for Ethanol: http://www.ethanol.org/
Ohio Corn Growers Association on ethanol: http://www.ohiocorn.org/env/default.htm |