WINNIPEG – Canada’s sugar industry needs to work out a united strategy for its future, according to a Manitoba task force.
In a report given to the Manitoba government this month, the task force called it a national disgrace that only 10 percent of Canada’s sugar production comes from homegrown sugar beets.
The rest comes from imported cane, the price of which is kept artificially sweet by worldwide subsidies and restrictive trade practices.
But the task force believes the world sugar trade will eventually become fairer, and it urges the industry to make sure it has sugar beet supplies for the long haul.
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The president of the Canadian Sugar Beet Producers Association said he’s happy to have official recognition of what farmers have been saying for years.
Ken Yuill said producers have been getting slim returns for their beets because sugar from their product has to compete with the cheap world price.
The Portage la Prairie, Man. grower said he’s pleased the report documents that Canadian growers are low-cost sugar producers who need to invest in new equipment if they’re to continue planting beets.
“I’m not prepared right now to second guess what will happen,” said Yuill. “All I’m saying is that if nothing happens, we won’t have a domestic industry.”
The task force took a year and a half to come up with the 160-page report.
Brian Kelly, a Winnipeg consultant who was part of the group, said it took a lot of time to delve into the politics of the world market which directly affects Canadian growers.
Special commodity
“Sugar, for whatever historical reasons, is largely viewed as special, even much more special than other food and agricultural commodities.”
In some countries, Kelly said the domestic price for sugar is twice the world price.
He said the European Union spent almost $2.5 billion on sugar export subsidies in 1994 alone. The United States recently put strict import limits on refined sugar and products containing sugar.
“It’s not just a common practice, it’s literally every country in the world except Canada that (distorts world trade) to some extent,” Kelly said.
Meanwhile, sugar beet growers receive little help. In fact, the report states they got less than one third the support enjoyed by wheat and barley growers.
The task force called on the Canadian government to push for fairer world trade in upcoming world trade negotiations.
With fairer trade, the sugar beet industry could possibly triple in Canada, providing $300 million for Manitoba’s economy alone. Processors would be able to compete in world trade. The world price would rise, and growers would be happier.
In the short term, growers and Rogers Sugar, which owns plants in Winnipeg and Taber, Alta., need to agree on the industry’s direction and sort out some logistical snags, Kelly said.
The task force called for Manitoba growers and the company to agree on a new three-year contract by December.
It also urged growers, processors, industrial users and governments to get together at a seminar by March 1997 to work out a long-term plan.
