?CL. XVII. No. 433. 



THE AGRICULTURAL NEWS. 



381 



UNITED STATES SUGAR '.IMPORTS 

 AND EXPORTS. 



The United States reports of Foreign (Jomuierce in the 

 United States for the seven months ending July 31, says the 

 Louhiana Planter, October 26, 1918, show that during 

 those seven months 1,927,516 short tons of sugar were 

 imported into the United States and were valued at 

 $179,589,491. These figures stand as against the figures 

 for the previous year of importations of 1,936,518 tons, 

 practically the same quantity, valued at nearly 15 million 

 dollars less, or at $164,980,375. For the year ending 

 ■July 31, 1916, the total imports reached 2,062,694 short 

 tons, valued at $164,529,038, slightly more sugar than the 

 succeeding year, and about $450,000 less in total value. 

 Considerable quantities of these sugars were taken to the 

 United States, and there refined and then exported. 



In the exportation of these sugars the Department of 

 Commerce includes them among the exports of domestic 

 products, whereas probably not one pound of the sugar 

 exported was of domestic production. The sugar refiner 

 takes the sugar already produced and of high grade, gener- 

 ally about 96-test, and by washing and filtering it eliminates 

 the brown colour and whitens the sugar, a manipulation that 

 bears little or no relation to the real manufacture of the 

 sugar. Any way, this vagary of the government in its com- 

 mercial reports is misleading in its character. 



For the seven months ending July 31 only 49,676 tons 

 of sugar were exported. The limited quantity stands as 

 against •:i07,538 tons during the same period last year, and 

 547,339 tons the year before. The emergency calls in 

 Europe for sugar led to the landing of many of their foreign 

 sugars in New York to undergo the process of refining, but in 

 the meantime Great Britain has so improved her own 

 resources in refining as to have caused the immense drop or 

 decline in our exports of refined sugars. 



The fixed values placed upon sugars by the Food Control 

 Board have resulted in a degree of uniformity in the import 

 prices of sagar that, while no longer a novelty, is a phase of 

 the sugar industry never before seen. 



The exports of refined sugar for the seven months ending 

 July 31 were valued at $6,413,256, and were almost exactly 

 50,000 short tons in quantity. Over 21,000 short tons of 

 these sugars, valued at over 3 millions of dollars, went to 

 France ; 8,000 short tons, valued at a little over a million 

 dollars, went to Belgium, and the United Kingdom got 7,000 

 short tons valued at about $900,000; the rest of the .Ameri- 

 can export.s wont to various smaller countries. 



Apropos of the foregoing, Mr. Herbert Hoover, Food 

 Administrator, has recently issued, through the United 

 States Food Admistration Office in New Orleans, 

 a prospectus of the food conservation necessary for the 

 Federal Union for the year 1919. As atfecting the 

 sugar question, Mr. Hoover's views of sugar supply are 

 of great interest. Sugar shipment from the United 

 States for the three years before the war averaged 

 618,000 tons. For the year ending July 1, 1918, 1,520,000 

 tons were shipped, and Mr. Hoover now calculates that for 

 theyear ending July 1, 1919, there must be shipped 1,850,000 

 tons of sugar — an increase of 330,000 tons over the previous 

 year. While as compared with foodstuffs, the increase of 

 which is estimated as slightly over 50 per cent., the percent- 

 age of increase in the exports of sugar (slightly under 20 per 

 cent) does not look very large, still it is quite significant ; 

 for it is computed that it would practically take all the loose 

 sugar lying in Cuba and anywhere in the Western World, 



and also the surplus lying in the Far East, unless there 

 happens to be a very successful season in the Western World 

 and the crops turn out much larger than usual, and larger 

 than can fairly be expected. 



An additional point taken into consideration is that this 

 increased quantity of sugar demanded for Europe is a con- 

 tinued and convincing appreciation of the wonderful value of 

 sugar as food. 



PRICES OF SUGAR. 



In a pamphlet entitled 'Questions and Answers concern- 

 ing Sugar', issued by the Bureau of Statistics, Washington, 

 .there are many interesting facts brought forward which 

 perhaps are not always well understood even in sugar growing 

 countries. 



With regard to the price of sugar, it is remarkable that 

 until the War occasioned an abnormal rise in price, sugar is 

 the one staple food product the price of which has not shown 

 a material increase for the decade 19001910. In 1900 the 

 price of sugar per 8). in New York was 5-3 2c. and it had 

 fallen in 1910 to 4'97c. The increase in prices of other 

 staple foods in the New York market for the same period 

 ranged from 14'4 per cent, for potatoes and beans, to 898 

 per cent, for salt pork. The average increase, as shown by 

 the Bureau of Labour, in the price of thirty-three leading 

 staple foods was 45 '3 per cent, while, on the other hand, the 

 price of sugar decreased 7 per cent. 



The price of raw sugar in the world is regulated by the 

 law of supply and demand. The quantity of stocks on hand 

 is always relatively small, and both an actual and an antici- 

 pated material increase or decrease in the world's production 

 violently affects the price. For instance, owing to serious 

 drought in Western Europe in 1911, which resulted in a 

 decreased production of 1,500,000 tons of beet sugar, the 

 price of raw sugar in Hamburg advanced 50 per cent, within 

 ninety days from the time the drought was first reported. 

 Again, owing to increased world production of both beet and 

 cane sugar, and the consequent increase in sugar stocki, the 

 average price of sugar in 1913 had reached its lowest point. 

 Because of the war, however, the beet-sugar crop of Europe 

 in 1914-15 was 665,000 tons less than the preceding crop, 

 and the production of the next year was still further reduced 

 by 2^ million tons, a decrease which was not made up by 

 the increased production of cane sugar. Great Britain, which 

 had been purchasing 60 per cent, of her sugar supply from 

 Germany and Australia, immediately began b'lying raw 

 sugar in tropical islands, especially in Cuba, which had 

 formerly marketed the bulk of its output in the I'nited 

 States. With two competing purchasers instead of one 

 who had known that the Cuban producer must come to 

 him sooner or later, the world's price of raw sugar rapidly 

 increased, causing a similar rise in the price of refined. 

 Great Britain was unable to purchase a sufficient quantity of 

 raw sugar, and then commenced purchasing refined sugar 

 made from Cuban raw sugar in New York. Other European 

 nations also entered the United States market, which raised 

 the price of raw sugar delivered at New York from 3-.50c. 

 per tt). in 1913 to 5'78c. per &. in 1915, while the average 

 price ot refined sugar, which was 4 '270. per ft. in 1913, 

 advanced to 6S6c. in 1916. 



Sugar may be said to be a hand-to-mouth product. It 

 is also to be remembered that the present high price paid 

 by the consumer for sugar, is also due to the rise in the 

 rates of freight, and the difficulties of marine transport. 



