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Routine trade-related slanging, you'd think. You'd have to think again. And not just because India is so big on the world sugar map, closely rivalling China as the world's biggest sweetener market and Brazil as the world's biggest producer. Sugar has always been a highly distorted market. This is because it has this uncanny habit of appearing at the fault lines of the some of the world's most bitter divides. Take the Cuban story, for instance. In the 19th century, this island-state off the coast of Florida was the world's biggest sugar producer. As American demand for the commodity bloated, more and more of the local production capacity passed into American hands... till a fiery young man called Fidel Castro snatched it all back in 1959, and imposed Communist state control. From then on, it was the Soviet Union that got Cuba's sugar. But the real sugar shock was in 1973. Wait-a-minute... sugar shock? Sugar prices, having stayed under 10 cents a pound, suddenly spiked to above 30 cents a pound, hitting highs of 40 and 45 cents. Chaos ensued. By now, the average American was consuming nearly his own weight in sugar every year (this continues in this 10-million-tonne market). The hunt for alternate sweeteners led the US to corn sugar, and people started clamouring for tighter US control of sugar supplies. But why did prices shoot up? The answer lies in that other sugarcane extract: ethanol. While this extract is known to turn perfectly sober people into total addle-heads, it is also an alternate fuel for cars---an alternate that's not totally addle-headed, as Brazil showed. Ever since, sugar has had a lot of trouble acting like a regular farm product like any other (though sugar prices did crash in the early 1980s). And it's not for nothing that sugar is seen as a 'sensitive' commodity in the US. Just how sensitive is it? Perhaps the world's biggest packager of sugar---The Coca-Cola Company---has an answer, an answer that could sound like music to either side of any divide. Or maybe just a note, a note to follow su...
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Just
how exciting can sugar be? The last time sugar made the news in a world
trade dispute was less than a month ago, and most didn't even notice.
Brazil, Australia and Thailand dragged the EU to the WTO on the complaint
that its sugar subsidies were unfair, and the WTO agreed.