Extreme weather has dealt a huge blow to the sugar industry around the world this year, which could leave you needing more cash to fill the trick-or-treat bag.
“This has been a very difficult year for global sugar. If you look at the top ten producing countries this year, six of them experienced extreme weather,” Chief Meteorologist at Everstream Analytics, John Davis, told FOX Weather. “And the consequence of that is higher prices for anything you use sugar in, including candy.”
He pointed to the drought in Thailand, the fourth largest producer, reducing production by almost a quarter.
India, the US and Europe were flooded, representing the second, sixth and third top producers.
Everstream said extreme weather is expected to reduce global sugar supplies by 10% to 15% over the 2023/24 growing season.
The US Food and Drug Administration estimates global production for the season to be 187.9 million tons.
Weather will play a role in reducing global sugar supplies by 10% to 15% over the 2023-24 growing season, according to Everstream.Getty Images/iStockphoto
Pakistan and Mexico have also been dealing with drought. China experienced terrible rains.
“And, of course, all the extreme weather that we’ve had globally, it’s come at the wrong time,” Davis said. “If you get heavy rains during the harvest season, it disrupts the harvesting activities and damages the crop as a whole. But it all comes back to the amount and frequency of extreme weather we experience globally.”
Last year, the price of sugar increased by 42%. Sugar prices were at a 12-year high of 31.54 cents per pound, according to the International Sugar Organization.
Extreme weather leading to drought has drastically reduced sugar production in major producing countries. Getty Images
“Sugar prices are a subject of conversation, but we’re not in a shortage situation with sugar supplies, and we don’t expect any disruption,” Todd Scott, senior communications manager at The Hershey Company, told FOX Weather in July. “Also, the price of sugar has no effect on our Halloween.”
And it’s not just Halloween candy and baked goods that are seeing price increases. Sugar can be used to make ethanol fuel.
It is a food staple and preservative used in almost every food and beverage category. It is used in medicine, wound care, cosmetics, pest control, bioplastics, building materials, paper products, herbicides, cements and adhesives, animal feed and detergents.
Cutting and harvesting sugarcane in the fall on a farm along the Mississippi in Baldwin, Louisiana, is shown. Getty Images
“Other sectors that use sugar, we’re talking a little bit about energy, ethanol, things like that,” Davis said. “Many different sectors out there have sugar as a key component.”
El Niño was behind the last spike in sugar prices in 2011
Sugar subsidies kept artificial prices low, so farmers replanted with higher-income crops after the new turn of the century. Then Europe reduced sugar subsidies in the mid-2000s.
“2008/2009 saw the biggest drop in global sugar production,” said financial firm Vikingen.se. “World production fell by almost 20 million tons.”
A graph showing the world’s leading sugar producers in 2022-23 is shown. Statista / FOX Weather Day laborers, seasonal migrants from the impoverished northeastern states of Brazil, help load a truck with sugar cane. Getty Images
In mid-2009, an El Niño event formed, and the world leader in sugarcane production was severely affected.
“Brazil’s sugar cane collapse in July, August and September was affected by wet weather, resulting in the world losing 1.5 million tonnes of sugar production,” Vikingen said. “This sugar is very much needed in India and elsewhere. As a direct result, the price of raw sugar rose to 30 cents per pound in February 2010.”
Sugar producers in the Northern Hemisphere are hit by dry weather.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
