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ORLANDO -- Sugar producers had better be careful what
they ask for in negotiations on a new farm bill this year, an influential
U.S. senator warned industry representatives Monday.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said failure to work out a
"rational" sugar policy could result in the industry's
controversial price-support program being dropped -- a specter that U.S.
growers fear could destroy domestic producers, including the cane-growing
areas of South Florida.
"We're going to take a hard look at sugar
policy," said Roberts, who chaired the House Agriculture Committee
when the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act was written and now sits on the Senate
Agriculture Committee. "There has to be a real discussion."
Another essential, he said, is a breakthrough in the
deadlock over U.S. exports of corn syrup to Mexican soft-drink markets and
increased Mexican exports of sugar to the United States, a situation he
likened to "two porcupines in an amorous position."
About 300 delegates, most representing industrial
users of sugar and corn syrup, are attending a three-day conference
sponsored by the International Dairy Foods Association.
Major issues include overproduction, low prices for
raw sugar and the North American Free Trade Agreement, which boosts
Mexico's duty-free sugar export limit tenfold.
The 1996 Farm Bill overhauled major farm programs,
but retained sugar's price supports and thus made cane and beets
attractive to growers of other crops whose subsidies and acreage limits
were thrown out.
They planted more, leading to a market glut and
record low prices.
South Florida sugar companies -- including Palm
Beach-based Florida Crystals, U.S. Sugar Corp. of Clewiston and the Belle
Glade-based Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida -- forfeited more
than half a million tons of raw sugar worth a total of $127.6 million to
satisfy their federal loans.
Nationwide, 1.1 million tons were forfeited.
The 1996 act's provisions extend until 2002. Roberts
said he doesn't foresee major changes in the next bill because farmers are
basically happier with the flexibility of fewer restrictions on what to
plant.
Also, more than half the Senate Agriculture Committee
is up for reelection in 2002, he noted, "and nobody wants to be
talking about a farm bill in an even-numbered year."
Robert Coker, a lobbyist for U.S. Sugar, said he
agreed with Roberts that growers like flexibility, but they still need the
loans and import quotas to sustain prices because the market alone isn't
giving them high enough prices to survive.
"This is probably the worst economic condition
we've seen in two decades, the most severely depressed prices across the
board -- wheat, corn, sorghum," he said.
If government took away price supports and left
growers with no revenue, flexibility wouldn't matter, Coker said.
"If not for that, you'd have tractors in the
streets."
mary_mclachlin@pbpost.com |