New Marketing Year, New Hope for Sugar Markets
By Ron Sterk, Food Business News
KANSAS CITY — While the coronavirus disrupted most markets beginning in March, challenges for the sugar market began the preceding fall and continued through 2020. But a new marketing year begins Oct. 1 for sugar with expectations of increased domestic supply, less demand disruption and lower prices.
A year ago this time the sugar beet harvest was humming along for what appeared to be a good crop with beet sugar production forecast at 5,005,000 tons, up 1% from a year earlier although down 5% from record output of 5,279,000 tons in 2017-18. Crop conditions were high with the US Department of Agriculture rating the beet crop above 80% good to excellent in the three largest producing states of Minnesota, Idaho and North Dakota, at 60% or above in all other states, and the Louisiana sugarcane crop at 64%. Then the wheels came off.