Bitter Sweet

“The President told her [Ms. Lewinsky] that he no longer felt right about their intimate relationship, and he had to put a stop to it…At one point during their conversation, the President had a phone call from a sugar grower in Florida whose name, according to Ms. Lewinsky, was something like “Fanuli.” In Ms. Lewinsky’s recollection, the President may have taken or returned the call just as she was leaving…the President talked with Alfonso Fanjul of Palm Beach, Florida from 12:42 to 1:04 p.m. The Fanjuls are prominent sugar growers in Florida.” 1

The above is taken from US Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s report to Congress on then [1996] US President Bill Clinton’s ex secret bilateral bodily fluid trade negotiations with White House intern Ms. Monica Lewinsky. What has this got to do with industrial scale agriculture’s fouling of our environment, liberties and society you may ask?

Everything.

You see - the above excerpt does more than paint the picture of the shenanigans at play in the most powerful Man in the World’s office. It serves to illustrate the extent of direct influence and access agribusiness chiefs have on key decision makers. The phone call to Clinton’s office came only hours after Vice President Al Gore proposed a tax on Florida sugar growers to aid a cleanup operation concerning the Everglades following years of publicly subsidised assault by the sugar industry; water levels lowered, reptiles, birds and other animals driven out and leaching of phosphates into the ground. Needless to say this tax never came about – and Clinton remains on the Fanjul Christmas card list.

Sugar production is truly, though certainly not exclusively, a playground of goliath scale industrial agriculture. From the techniques of crop husbandry, the methods of processing to the final application of the product, the greater sugar industry is all about subversion and dollars. Taking the current situation in the US as a starting point, I think a look at what drives the world market in sugar production is worthy of your time. Especially when you consider that the vast majority of this commodity crop ends up in processed foods – and that in nutritional value, sugar scores a virtual nil.

“Alfie” Fanjul and his brother “Pepe” [Jose Fanjul] run the Family sugar company, Flo-Sun. An impeccable example of vertically integrated business structure, the Fanjul family companies grow sugarcane on some 400,000 acres of farm in both Florida and the Dominican Republic and process the cane in their own refineries and sell it through their own wholesalers. Their story is not exclusive. In the US some 58 farms produce about a third of the national crop 2. Come now – the industrialists will say – there is no crime in being competitive. On Planet Economia, this is the mantra. But competitiveness in the case of the sugar industry is only an illusion. US taxpayers annually contribute about $1.4 billion in price supports to the sugar growers of the US. Alfie nets about $85 - $125 million per annum in welfare payments. The 17 largest producers receive some 58% of state sugar production handouts 2. Now that is what I call a competition. The object of this game: who can get the most taxpayers money for the pleasure of keeping prices to them at a high – as well as threatening the health of their children (in 1997 US children received 15% of their calorie intake from added sugar in processed foods, incidentally a further 35% was in added fat – making a huge 50% from the two – this going some way towards justifying early 1990’s figures showing 23% of American white girls aged 6-11 were overweight, alongside 29% of Mexican-American girls and 31% of Black girls 3.

The side effects of this competition are effectively impossible to quantify in economic speak. In the Everglades alone the US Government spends approximately $63m annually to maintain artificial water levels and flood plains to prolong sugar production conditions. This price takes no account of the loss of biodiversity affected by the devastation of about three to five acres of the Everglades everyday 2. What price the extinction of a single species of water insect, never mind a whole ecosystem? Time - when quantified by the economists - probably won’t tell.

Regardless of the costs, hidden and accounted, the benefits of supporting artificially high prices for domestic produced sugar through direct payments, import restrictions and environmental degradation - say the industrialists - are clear. So clear, I think, that they are invisible. Ergo: non-existent. The fallacy of “free trade”; compounded by the fact that the rules apply only when necessary for those who make them. The perversion of current Developed World subsidisation of agricultural produce was the subject of an earlier Malbouffe. My argument in this piece was that the current framework for subsidisation of Developed World agricultural production is fundamentally flawed. The industrial sugar production industry personifies my argument. It is an industry devoid of anything other than a financial end brought about by whatever subversive, destructive and underhand means necessary.

But there are alternatives. There always are. Natural sugar substitutes are commonly found and many are organically produced already. These include honey, rice syrup, fructose, maple syrup, Amasake and Carob. Likewise, Organic and non-industrially produced sugar derived from cane that is grown in more apt conditions and ecosystems conducive to its cultivation is available on World markets. This sugar is refined using processes devoid of the harsh chemicals used by the likes of the industrial scale sugar moguls of Florida. Thankfully this market is estimated to be growing by up to 30% annually.

Finally, like all other facets of food production, consumption and agriculture, the direction of the sugar market and its future impact on the environment, society and both of these health, is in our hands. The industrial produced sugar market has its main outlet in processed foods. Cereals, canned vegetables, snacks, carbonated drinks, sweets, cakes, some processed meats, to name but a few are the products that soak up much of the industrially produced sugar harvest. Needless to say, these processed foods and the issues involved in the production of everything in them can leave a bitter aftertaste when the wide spectrum of external and direct ills are factored into their production – and then offered up for our consumption.

Malbouffe.

AC

1“The Starr Report” Narrative Section III, January-March 1996: Continued Sexual Encounters. D. Presidents Day (February 19) Break-Up.
2 “Fatal Harvest”: A Raw Deal For Consumers; The Business Of Sugar Politics [Island Press]
3 “Food Politics” by Marion Nestle [University Of California Press]