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Where's the sugar coming from now? I assume they're not closing due to reduced demand.
by asciimo 10y ago
Where's the sugar coming from now? I assume they're not closing due to reduced demand.
- dpark 10y agoI wouldn't be surprised if demand for cane sugar was down. Most foods substituted corn syrup decades ago. And of the sugar sold, it's not all cane sugar. Much of the sugar is sourced from beets.
- mark-r 10y agoOur government has been limiting sugar imports forever, to maintain a domestic production capacity. In the end all we ended up doing is providing the impetus for a substitute - the production is going away anyway.
- scurvy 10y agoThe price of sugar also crashed this year. It rebounded only to start crashing again. I think economics played a large role in Hawaii.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dnautics 10y agoActually that's untrue. There's very little domestic cane sugar (beet sugar only can be turned into white sugar). Government has been limiting sugar imports with a tariff regime because a single family runs the Dominican refineries and they lobby Congress to keep tariffs up everywhere but there and thus secure a monopoly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanjul_brothers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanjul_brothers If you are a small household cook you may not know this but you should buy all of your white sugar in the fall when the Montana beet crop comes in and drops the price (though commodity options trading may have smoothened that out a bit in recent years)
- maxerickson 10y agoIt costs less than $1 a pound in small packages. It's probably not worth thinking about it unless you use quite a large amount of sugar.
- niftich 10y ago'Cane sugar' has a good brand image though, especially in upmarket circles. The 2000s were marked by consumer trends increasingly rejecting HFCS so several products were reformulated with crystalline sucrose, often sourced from sugarcane and shown on packaging as 'cane sugar'. The trend was so acute that in 2010 the Corn Refiners Association petitioned the FDA to change the designation 'corn sugar' to be usable to refer to HFCS [1] (which was ultimately denied). But then in 2013, due to "consumer indifference", many mass-market products switched back to HFCS while sugar prices where high. So what gives? Has sugar crashed since then? [1] http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/OfficeofFoods/CFSAN/CFSANFOIAElectronicReadingRoom/ucm305226.htm http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/OfficeofFoods/CFS... [2] http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Markets/HFCS-free-The-trend-stalled-by-consumer-indifference http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Markets/HFCS-free-The-trend...
- bfuller 10y agoI know USA grows a lot of beets for sugar
- ams6110 10y agoCane/beet sugar is making a comeback, for some reason people seem to think it's healthier than HFCS.
- feld 10y agoThe body certainly handles fructose differently. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructolysis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructolysis
- scurvy 10y agoBrazil? I know that they grow a lot for their local ethanol gasoline blends. Not sure how much is for export though.
- ucaetano 10y agoPretty much all of it. Production is private and producers switch from ethanol to sugar according to international sugar prices & local gas prices. India is also a large producer.
- bitwize 10y agoIf cane sugar were introduced into the USA today, it would be classified as a Schedule I drug, being toxic and more addictive than cocaine. I wouldn't be surprised if the unpleasant discoveries surrounding sugar in recent years have substantially hurt the sugar business.