The U.S. House of Representatives is proposing a new farm bill that would effectively shut southern Alberta sugar beet juice out of the American market.
The House version of the new farm bill published July 20 would count sugar beet thick juice against the 9,600 tonne sugar import tariff rate quota.
“That really means juice would not get in because that quota is filled with refined sugar,” said Alberta Sugar Beet Growers (ASBG) general manager Bruce Webster.
“We would lose that market.”
He said a Canadian Sugar Institute lawyer in Washington will work to have that provision changed in the final farm bill version expected this autumn.
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ASBG, the marketing board for Alberta sugar beets, will also lobby Canadian MPs, senators and government officials to enlist their support in protesting the proposed protectionism.
“We will do what we can to reverse this,” Webster said.
The board has found other offshore markets this year and has not shipped to the U.S. market, but Webster noted that in many years American buyers were the main customers.
In 2006, 25,000 tonnes of juice were shipped south producing revenues of $7.5 million for southern Alberta’s 250 beet producers, he said.
According to petitions filed in Washington in late 2006, exports in 2005 were 36,000 tonnes worth $12.5 million US.
The industry has been concerned that Rogers Sugar might close its plant in Taber, Alta., if the U.S. border effectively closed to Canadian sugar beet thick juice.
The U.S. sugar industry has been trying to stop the flow of juice from Canada for years.
After free trade deals in the 1990s reduced access to the American market for refined sugar, the sugar beet board developed a market for its unrefined juice, which was not covered by the restrictive tariff rate quota.
The juice was shipped to the Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Co-operative where Cargill refined it.
Major American competitor refineries argued the juice imports were a way of avoiding U.S. import rules and insisted the practice should be stopped.
The Minnesota refinery fired back with a brief to Washington that accused its competitors of an “endless campaign to kill competition.”
The U.S. Senate will produce its own version of a new farm bill and then representatives from the two houses of Congress will negotiate to reconcile the two versions into a finished product to be voted on by Congress.
Webster said the presence of alternative markets this year means there is no immediate danger of a closed border killing the plant.
“But in the longer term when conditions return that make the U.S. the best market, that will be a concern,” he said.
