Stephen Cadogan: Long finished in Ireland, Mercosur could soon end European sugar beet
Free Of The Duty Eu The Sugar Is Eu's Source Of 15% Brazil Import Entering The For Imports,
Farmers have warned the EU is dragging the sugar beet sector to disaster.
The end of beet processing in 2006 was keenly felt across Ireland, but there have been as many bad years as good for the industry in the EU since then.
Since 2006, when the business finished in Ireland, 104 EU factories have closed, and 200,000 farmers stopped growing sugar beet. By 2022, only 89 factories were left, located mostly in France, Germany, and Poland.
In just five years since 2017, 15 factories closed, and 27,000 farmers stopped growing sugar beet. Just over 100,000 growers remained in 2022, down from 145,000 in 2012.
Since 2017, 4,600 fewer people are directly employed by the EU sugar sector.
EU decisions have weakened the competitiveness and sustainability of the EU sugar beet sector, said Guillaume Gandon of Copa-Cogeca, representing EU farmers' organisations and co-ops.
He was speaking before the EU controversially concluded the Mercosur trade deal negotiations to open up trade with Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
This agreement could spell the end for EU sugar beet. Already, Brazil is the source for 15% of the EU's sugar imports, entering the EU free of import duty.
The Brazilian sugar comes from cane grown with the help of about 30 pesticides which are no longer allowed for use in sugar beet in the EU.
In contrast, declining productivity and competitiveness in the EU sugar sector can be linked to growers losing more than 30 pesticides they had used to protect their crops.
Mr Gandon said no effective alternatives had emerged to replace these banned pesticides.
At least 13 more pesticides are likely to be banned in the EU by the end of 2027, leaving EU growers with access to only a handful of herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides.
As a result, weed, pest and disease pressures have been especially severe in many European beet growing regions, reducing beet sugar content to historic lows, and significantly reducing the sugar yield per hectare.
Since 2018, the 1.5% annual gain in sugar yield per hectare (which rose from eight to 13 tonnes per hectare between 1992 and 2015) stagnated.
The latest EU sugar crisis is reflected in average prices recently falling more than 18% in a month, and by 26% since October, 2023. But this is only the latest chapter in the longer story of declining crop productivity and quality, and rising input costs, that lowered incomes for growers and reduced profitability for EU processors.
Prices had jumped to record levels since the end of 2021 due to the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, and drought and poor yields in 2022 on EU farms. However, prices are falling now, and sugar companies have reduced the beet acreages they want in 2025.
Growers fear a market crisis, without safety nets or risk management tools to protect them.
In the 2006 EU sugar industry reform to reduce EU production, incentives were offered for processors to renounce sugar quota and dismantle their processing plants, with compensation for those affected.
Greencore, the sole Irish processor, availed of this scheme, and dismantled the last remaining sugar factory, in Mallow.
A total compensation package worth €353m included €220m for beet growers, €6m for machinery contractors, and €127m for Greencore.
Sugar production continued in 18 member states.
