Federal Sugar Subsidy Helps Destroy Florida Everglades
10/24/99
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Title: Sour Deal: Federal Sugar Subsidy
Source: Charleston Gazette (South Carolina) letter to the editor
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 24, 1999
Byline: Shireen I. Parsons
Every year, federal subsidies put billions of dollars into the
pockets of sugar cane magnates. Flush with cash, they spend millions
buying politicians and blunting reform efforts to halt the continuing
destruction of the unique environment in the Florida Everglades.
In "The Sweet Hereafter," in the November Harper's, writer Paul
Roberts documents the long-term costs of subsidizing sugar.
Three counties south of Lake Okeechobee produce more than half the
nation's sugar cane. Cane fields have destroyed the natural saw-grass
marsh over an area the size of Rhode Island.
Every acre is irrigated and drained with a costly series of pumps,
dams, dikes and canals. Tax dollars pay for it all.
Federal sugar programs keep domestic prices at least 50 percent above
world market prices. Artificially high prices encourage sugar growing
in what would otherwise be economically marginal swampland.
"Like Elvis or sex," Roberts writes, "sugar is everywhere and in
everything - our economy and politics, our language and demographic
makeup, our physiology and mass psychology, and, of course, our
diet."
Roberts dates Florida's sugar boom to the Cuban revolution. Shortly
after Fidel Castro came to power, the United States embargoed sugar,
cigars and everything else made in Cuba.
To replace lost imports, Florida's sugar-cane acreage jumped tenfold
by the mid-1960s.
The biggest victim was the Everglades. The annual breeding population
of elegant wood storks dropped from 20,000 in 1960 to 1,800 today.
The endangered Cape Sable seaside sparrow population dwindled from
tens of thousands to 3,500. Biologists say this vanishing bird shows
the declining health of the Everglades.
The key reforms are reducing phosphorus runoff from canefields and
restoring natural water flows.
But sugar cane cash still has the upper hand with politicians from
both parties. Consider these facts:
In 1992, the Fanjul family, with vast holdings in Florida and the
Dominican Republic, began playing both sides of the political game.
Pepe Fanjul was vice chairman of the Bush-Quayle Finance Committee.
Alfy Fanjul backed Clinton and Gore and hosted a $120,000 fund-
raiser.
After Clinton won, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt came up with a
plan to save the Everglades very similar to one created by Alfy
Fanjul. Taxpayers got to pay more than half the $700 million it would
cost to filter pollutants from water flowing to the Everglades.
In 1996, sugar interests spent $25 million in an advertising
campaign to successfully counter an environmental campaign run by
Save Our Everglades.
In 1998, sugar interests in Florida spent $26 million on state
political efforts from winning referendums to electing Republican Jeb
Bush as governor.
Between 1990 and 1998, sugar interests spent $13 million on
presidential and congressional races.
Today, domestic producers sell sugar at 22 cents a pound. Producers
in most other nations get 8 cents. America's artificial price prop
adds $1.4 billion to the shopping bills of U.S. consumers each year.
People like the Fanjuls get the best of both worlds. Owning half of
all sugar lands in the Dominican Republic, they raise sugar cheaply,
import it, then sell at artificially high U.S. prices.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., calls the federal sugar subsidy program
"one of the most invidious, inefficient, Byzantine, special-interest,
Depression-era federal programs."
Vice President Al Gore's plan to restore the Everglades over 20 years
would cost taxpayers $8 billion. His program is backed by several
environmental groups. But, Roberts point out, Gore's bill does
nothing to regulate or curtail the vast sugar fields that created the
problem in the first place. And the Fanjuls keep raising money for
the Democrats.
Maybe the obstacles are just too great. Unions back sugar because
they fear thousands of jobs could go overseas. Politicians back sugar
because they get paid so well. And, all the while, Americans are
paying nearly three times too much for sugar.
Shireen I. Parsons
Christiansburg, Virginia
USA
"There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousand truths,
which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to
them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the
roof, and then fly away."
- Henry Ward Beecher