Europe is liberalising its sugar regime
IN A rickety warehouse on the banks of London’s Thames, sit mountains of caramel-coloured raw cane-sugar. Following a pattern of trade that is centuries old, they have been shipped across the oceans to Tate & Lyle Sugars’ dockside factory, where they will be refined into the white stuff. Cane reigns supreme worldwide, accounting for four-fifths of sugar production. In Europe, though, it accounts for only a fifth; most sugar is made instead from beet, thanks to a technique developed in the Napoleonic wars, when an English blockade halted French cane-sugar imports.
It is no surprise, then, that the sugar-beet industry was well guarded by Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy. But in recent years the EU has reformed its system of quotas and subsidies to lower food prices and enhance its farmers’ competitiveness; production quotas for milk were dismantled in 2015, for example. Now it is sugar’s turn. From October this year, the EU will abolish its minimum price and production quota for beet. Its complex restrictions on sugar imports will remain, however, as will its income support for farmers.
The beet sector has already been restructured in preparation…
