Defeating the amendment helps ensure that U.S. sugar policy will operate at no cost to the taxpayers, as it had under mandate by Congress in the 1980s and most of the 1990s. Vote on the amendment came during debate on the Senate's version of an omnibus Farm Bill. The House passed its Farm Bill in October. After Senate passage, a conference committee from the two houses will meet to work out differences between the two bills. Farm and commodity supporters are hopeful a final bill will be ready for the President's signature before Congress adjourns for the year.

The anti-sugar policy amendment, offered by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), would have immediately singled out sugar to be the only U.S. commodity program with no price-support mechanism.

Jack Nelson, president of Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers, Inc., Sugar Land, Texas, said, "America's sugar farmers applaud action by the U.S. Senate in soundly rejecting an amendment that would have jeopardized thousands of hard-working, efficient American farmers involved in sugar production, and the tens of thousands of American jobs that depend on a strong domestic sweetener industry." According to a study by England-based LMC International, the U.S. sweetener industry creates 372,000 direct and indirect jobs in 42 states, adding $22.1 billion to the economy each year.

In another part of the country, Ray VanDriessche, a sugarbeet farmer from Bay City, Michigan, and president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association, in commenting on the Senate vote, said, "The Senate's action on the anti-sugar amendment demonstrates that lawmakers were not fooled by who the real opponents of U.S. sugar policy really are-the giant, multinational food companies, candy manufacturers, grocers and others who want to fatten their profit line, no matter how much it hurts America's efficient sugar farmers."

In Louisiana, Jackie Theriot, a sugarcane grower and sugar mill operator from St. Martinville, and chairman of the American Sugar Cane League, said, "Despite the fact that the price American sugar farmers receive for their crop has dropped 25 percent since 1996, none of these savings have been passed on to consumers by the big food processors and other giant commercial users of sugar. In fact, even grocery stores-which don't have to do anything but put the bag of sugar they buy on the shelf-have actually increased the price they are charging consumers." He added, "But sugar, safely produced in the U.S. under rigidly controlled conditions, is still a real bargain, selling for 20 percent below what consumers in other developed countries pay for it."

Among sugar policy features in the Senate bill, which are virtually identical to the House version, are these provisions:

Reinstate authority to the Secretary of Agriculture to impose domestic marketing allotments in order to balance the markets, avoid forfeitures, and comply with import commitments under the WTO and the NAFTA. Direct the Secretary of Agriculture to operate U.S. sugar policy, to the maximum extent practicable, at no cost to the U.S. Treasury by avoiding sugar loan forfeitures. Reauthorize the non-recourse loan program through 2006 at 18 cents per pound for raw cane sugar and 22.9 cents per pound for refined beet sugar, essentially the same levels since 1985. The American Sugar Alliance is a national coalition of farmers, processors and refiners of sugarbeets, sugarcane, and corn for sweetener.