1.
Loan Program. Non-recourse loan program reauthorized through
2011 at 18 cents per pound for raw cane sugar and 22.90 cents per pound
for refined beet sugar (essentially the same level since 1985).
- Loan rates may be reduced,
at the Secretary of Agriculture's discretion, if foreign producers
reduce their export subsidies and support levels below their current
WTO commitments.
- In-process beet and cane
syrups can be put under loan.
- Sugar placed under loan in
September can be forfeited at the end of that month.
- The 100-point surcharge in
CCC interest rates for sugar loans is eliminated.
2.
Inventory Management. Provides authority to the Secretary to
impose domestic marketing allotments in order to balance the markets,
avoid forfeitures, and comply with our substantial import commitments
under the WTO and the NAFTA.
- The cost of storing excess
production is shifted from the government to the industry. When
allotments are in place, processors who have expanded marketings
(sugar sales to cane refiners, grocers, food manufacturers or other
commercial users) in excess of the rate of growth in domestic sugar
demand will have to postpone sale of some sugar, and either store it
at their own expense or sell it for other than domestic food use.
- No acreage or
production controls on sugarbeet or sugarcane farmers.
- No limits on how much
beet or cane processors can process.
- Contingent on the
resolution of stuffed molasses and second-tier Mexican sugar
import problems.
- Automatically trigger
off when imports exceed 1.532 million short tons (the total of
U.S. minimum-import obligations: 1.256 mst, WTO; .276 mst,
Mexico).
- Additional authority
for the Secretary to reduce CCC sugar stocks and the potential for
future sugar loan forfeitures by accepting bids for CCC sugar in
return for reducing future production.
3.
No-Cost. The Secretary is directed to operate the policy, to
the maximum extent practicable, at no cost to the U.S. Treasury by
avoiding sugar loan forfeitures.
4.
Marketing Assessments. Eliminated. This special tax on sugar
producers, at 1.375% of the beet or cane loan rates, was suspended in
fiscal years 2000 and 2001, but is scheduled to resume in fiscal 2002 and
2003.
5.
Sugar Storage Facility Loan Program. Will extend to sugar
processors the type of storage facility loan program available to grain
and other crop farmers, and will facilitate orderly marketing of sugar.
6.
Reporting Requirements. Expanded reporting requirements will
better enable the Secretary to track importation of high-sugar content
products created for the purpose of circumventing the U.S. sugar import
quota. |