| That's A Lot of Zeros |
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| The Sugar Beat | ||||||
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The Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) at the University of Missouri-Columbia has long been trusted within farming circles and by lawmakers for providing accurate, unbiased projections for agricultural markets.
 FAPRI just released its much-anticipated 2011 projections, and here’s what its projections about sugar supplies and sugar-to-ethanol use mean for future sugar policy costs.
Of course, FAPRI is not alone in its projections. The U.S. Department of Agriculture baseline budget estimates released in February showed the same for sugar policy expenditures over the next decade.
Both FAPRI and the USDA have good reason to make these projections, considering actual sugar policy costs since the 2002 Farm Bill.
All of those zeros should be a big plus for sugar policy as lawmakers start to wrestle with the 2012 Farm Bill in the current cost-cutting environment.
As freshman House Member Jeff Landry (R-LA) recently said during a radio interview, “It helps farmers without direct subsidies coming from the government, so these types of programs, I think, fare a lot better.”
Landry also said he plans to be a champion for sugar policy’s continuation and will make sure fellow budget hawks in the freshman class are aware of sugar’s positive story.
Landry’s pledge is just the latest in a string of good news for sugar policy, which has been publicly backed in recent months by the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Farmers Union, numerous foreign sugar producers, and other key congressional members.
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