When the American Sugar Alliance received a call earlier this month from CNBC to debate the newest think tank “expert” on sugar policy, we took a pass.

Getting across town to the television studio in bad weather on such short notice was difficult, plus, we rarely debate hired guns, choosing instead to debate the source of these attacks—big food manufacturers.

So, the American Sugar Alliance sent this statement to the network in place of a spokesperson:

“Having front groups for large food manufacturers attack sugar policy is nothing new. Multi-billion-dollar food companies want to lower farmers’ prices to boost their own profits.  Food manufacturers are not struggling; quite the opposite.   Candy companies in the U.S. are expanding and creating jobs, not downsizing.   And their trade association boasts of strong sales during the recession and profit margins of more than 35%.   Meanwhile, sugar is still so cheap they give it away in restaurants, and sugar producers have maintained this affordability without costing U.S. taxpayers a dime.”

When the live CNBC segment aired, the sugar industry was expecting a one-sided affair.  But much to our surprise, there was a spokesperson there to defend America’s sugar farmers, and he did a superb job.

Roger Johnson, the president of the National Farmers Union, so thoroughly beat the think tank “expert” in the debate that viewers likely left the show with a positive impression of sugar policy—certainly not the intent of the hit piece.

Here are a few sound bites from Roger’s performance.

• “[This think tank spokesperson is saying] let’s get rid of the sugar industry in this country because we’d rather import our food from foreign countries just like we import most of our oil from foreign countries right now. I think that is absolutely the wrong way to go. We have a sugar industry in this country that costs the taxpayer nothing. There are no taxpayer subsidies that go into this.”

  
  

• “Let me tell you how much the farmer gets out of the price of a 99-cent Hershey candy bar—less than two cents. You think that’s too much? I don’t. I mean, across all of food in this country, the farmers get less than 20 cents. In the case of sugar, it’s even significantly less than that. And the only way you end up with a domestic sugar industry in this country that has lots of jobs associated with them…is because those farmers that are raising [sugar] have some certainty of a market they can go to.”

  
  

• “I can tell you that the United States is the second-largest sugar importer in the world. So to suggest that our market is closed is just not the case… We import from 41 different countries around the globe. 38 of those countries, by the way, are developing countries that have very, very low levels of income. And the vast majority of those…countries, actually support the [U.S. sugar] program.”

Way to go, Roger.  On behalf of America’s sugar producers and the 146,000 jobs sugar supports, we wanted to say, “Thank you.”

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