Guest Post by Vincent H. Smith
In the United States, fewer than 4,500 farm businesses produce sugar. Yet they cost taxpayers up to $4 billion a year in subsidies.
The U.S. sugar program is a Stalinist-style supply control initiative that limits imports through quotas and domestic production through what are called marketing allotments.
This strategy substantially increases U.S. prices — on average U.S. sugar prices are about twice as high as world prices SBV8, +0.81% — ensuring domestic sugar production is artificially higher, crowding out other productive uses of irrigable farmland.
