| Having come and gone, 2000 wasn't exactly a banner year for
the region's -- or the nation's -- sugar industry.
And, when it comes to 2001, two key issues -- issues left unresolved
from 2000 because of political and legal wrangling -- take priority on the
U.S. sugar industry's agenda.
Shareholder-growers for Moorhead, Minn.-based American Crystal Sugar
Co., for example, received their lowest sugar beet payment about 20 years
-- $10 per ton less than the 10-year average.
Likely the first and foremost on the minds of sugar industry officials
and sugar producers alike, says Jim Horvath, American Crystal's CEO, is
the importation of "stuffed molasses" into the United States.
Stuffed molasses is a high-sugar variety of molasses. Imported into the
United States from Canada, the liquid is refined into usable sugar, a
practice which the U.S. sugar industry says hurts domestic growers.
Recent industry estimates indicate that stuffed molasses displaces the
amount of sugar produced by about 40,000 acres of sugar beets. In all,
Horvath says, that amounts to about 1.5 percent of the nation's total
yearly sugar consumption.
The nation's sugar industry attempted, through Congress, to achieve a
political solution to the issue late last year, Horvath says, but the
attempt fell short because of time and political opposition.
"We attempted to get some action takes as part of the last
session, but that effort was not successful -- because of both the time
factor and the internal party politics of trying to get something like
that through," Horvath says. "But it will again come up."
Appeals court date
The issue now is scheduled to be taken up in hearings before the U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington.
"The hearings are scheduled to begin Feb. 9," Horvath says.
"Once that wraps up, it's taken into consideration after the hearings
and the court will issue a ruling after that."
The U.S. sugar industry is optimistic that the appeals court will
decide in its favor given the support of the U.S. Customs Service, says
Neil Moseman, vice president of the U.S. Beet Sugar Association.
"The stuffed molasses issue is probably the one we can do the most
about -- that circumvention of the Tariff Rate Quota," Moseman says.
"U.S. Customs supported the industry here -- supported us in
initially winning the case in October of 1999, the decision which, of
course, was appealed. We take that as an encouraging
U.S. Customs' stand on the issue."
Another major issue facing the nation's sugar industry is the
importation of Mexican sugar under the North American Free Trade
Agreement. |