As the U.S. Senate debated an anti-sugar amendment, the American Sugar Alliance released a three-minute video designed to remind lawmakers of the importance of the sugar program.
Watch the video below.
In the video, ASA described its willingness to eliminate U.S. sugar policy once foreign subsidies are addressed so a free market can take hold, but expressed caution in unilaterally disarming and becoming dependent on subsidized foreign suppliers.
“Depending on other countries for a food staple was a recipe for disaster, which is why America created its sugar policy and encouraged domestic production,” the video said of America’s foreign dependence and resulting sugar rationing in the 1940s.
“Now, we have affordable, homegrown supplies. But that might soon change if some well-heeled lobbyists have their way,” the video continued. “Multinational food makers want artificially cheap sugar to boost corporate profits, even if it means jeopardizing 142,000 U.S. sugar jobs and America’s food security.
Heavily subsidized sugar from Mexico and Brazil, which ASA calls the “OPEC of sugar” in its video, threatens the U.S. industry and must be addressed for a free market to emerge.
ASA promotes a “zero-for-zero strategy that would eliminate U.S. sugar policy once foreign subsidies are addressed.” That strategy, ASA explains, “is a free market approach that rewards the best business people, not the most subsidized.”
Sugar producers, along with other high-profile farm and lending organizations, have been urging Congress to reject the Shaheen-Toomey amendment to the Farm Bill, and other such ammendments designed to gut U.S. sugar policy and reward subsidized foreign producers.
Such amendments threaten the future of the U.S. sugar industry, according to ASA.
“After all, does America really want to give foreign countries control over its food again?” it asks in the video’s conclusion.
For more information about the American Sugar Alliance and U.S. sugar policy, visit www.sugaralliance.org.