OPEN LETTER: SAY NO TO BIG SUGAR MONEY

The time has come to reject political contributions, direct, and indirect, from Big Sugar. This network of private companies exploits a government handout to rake in billions on the backs of taxpayers — only to kill American jobs and poison our air and water, especially in working-class communities.  

That’s not all. Big Sugar fights to keep sugar prices higher in America than anywhere else in the world. It’s an insult to every American household with a bag of sugar in the pantry.

Meanwhile, taxpayers foot the bill to clean polluted runoff from sugarcane fields and people who live near those fields pay to remove ash and soot from their properties.  

These are the reasons I am proud to say no to Big Sugar money. Proud to do my part to end the most rigged game in American politics. Because if we don’t start to say no Big Sugar money today, Americans won’t get the change we deserve.

Rigging the System

In 2020 alone, Florida’s sugar industry — the home of Big Sugar — put at least $11 million into congressional campaign coffers. This happened on both sides of the aisle, in every corner of America. While Big Sugar may ask for nothing in return from members of Congress today, they’re making a down payment on a future request to preserve price supports and import quotas in the farm bill. That future request will go something like, “Do us this one favor. We’re asking for just one vote, every five years. No skin off your back. No one gets hurt.”

But people are being hurt. Through import controls, negotiated in the farm bill, Big Sugar forces Americans to pay prices as high as 100 percent above the average global sugar price.

On top of that, Americans are on the hook for a subsidy of $2.4 to $4 billion per year, all to send profits mostly to a few wealthy sugar producers. 

The average sugar subsidy payout per year is more than $700,000 per grower, and the Big Sugar conglomerates suck up most of these benefits by representing multiple growers. Let’s be clear: these payouts are lavish gifts to a select few sugar barons, not small family farms. According to one calculation, the Fanjul family, known by many as “first family of corporate welfare,” benefits by “at least $150 million a year.”

Killing Jobs

Big Sugar will argue that it protects American jobs, especially in sugarcane- and sugar beet-producing areas of the country. 

But the numbers tell another story. Big Sugar contributed to the loss of 123,000 American manufacturing jobs between 1997 and 2015. And the jobs created by the industry are often low-wage, with poor working conditions and little opportunity for career growth - one lawyer referred to them as “modern-day slavery.”

Ironically, the federal government’s price protections have caused the American industry to fall behind. While global industry leaders innovate, diversify revenue streams and create jobs in new areas, Big Sugar is stuck in the past. For example, much of the global industry has shifted to green harvesting, a process which makes use of the entire crop to create biofuels and bioproducts, all without burning. Big Sugar ignores that opportunity.

Abroad, Big Sugar’s impact is even more damaging. In the Dominican Republic, workers on the Fanjul sugarcane plantation live and work in conditions that would leave those who eat sugar “absolutely horrified” at the human cost of their daily convenience.

Hurting Working Class Americans 

In Florida alone, Big Sugar burns nearly half a million acres of sugarcane for eight months of the year, poisoning the air in blue-collar, predominantly Black communities. Study after study has shown that particulate matter from cane burning can cause cancer, asthma and other respiratory problems. 

These communities suffer some of the worst smoke pollution in the country, with hospital admission rates spiking for respiratory health issues during harvest season. Children and the elderly in Florida communities surrounded by sugarcane are especially vulnerable to this toxic pollution. Still, Big Sugar burns. 

Other countries like Brazil and India and states like Louisiana are moving away from the practice. And yet the burning in Florida’s inland Glades communities has continued for generations. Sugarcane burning pollutes the air they breathe and the water they drink, but many elected officials take Big Sugar’s money and look the other way.

It comes as no surprise that when the wind blows toward higher income, predominantly white communities, sugarcane burning is subject to stricter state regulations. If that double standard weren’t enough, Florida recently passed a new law to protect sugar companies from lawsuits filed by residents who are harmed by “particle emissions” — legislative language backed by Big Sugar. It’s a reminder of how working-class people are treated unfairly by a system rigged against them.

Jeopardizing Our Fresh Air and Clean Water

Studies show that burning cane produces black carbon, “which has powerful global warming effects.” And yet the Florida burn continues. In Brazil, where the government looked at the damage caused by sugarcane burning and responded with a shift to green harvesting, carbon dioxide emissions “dropped by almost 10 million tons.” And yet the Florida burn continues.

Big Sugar is also exploiting Florida’s most important water source, Lake Okeechobee, and the treasured wetlands of the Everglades. Today, estimates suggest half the fish and wildlife in the Everglades have in their systems methylmercury, a toxic byproduct of sugarcane farming. Methylmercury can poison animals and “reduce I.Q., deficits in language, attention, motor function, [and] memory” in people. 

Big Sugar keeps a tight grip on the state’s water supply. For decades state officials who controlled the flow of water were closely aligned with the industry. Big Sugar used its influence to block water storage projects south of Lake Okeechobee, and has sued the Army Corps of Engineers to guarantee it has all the water it wants from the lake. The result: repeated damaging discharges to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries, triggering toxic-algae blooms and other devastating impacts on marine life and all who depend on clean water. 

Change is On the Way

The 20th congressional district of Florida is the heart of Big Sugar country. The place where Big Sugar has for generations kept its tightest grip on political power.

In a breakthrough - a sign of how sharply views of Big Sugar have changed - six Democratic primary candidates and one Republican candidate agreed last year to reject Big Sugar money.

And in what may be the biggest blow to Big Sugar in generations, the winner of the election rejected sugar money during the campaign and directly called out the industry for its insidious influence. Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick criticized Big Sugar for “silenc[ing] legislators by donating large amounts to their campaigns.”

It’s a courageous position. It validates the idea that standing up to Big Sugar is a winning position. If that’s true in Florida, it’s true everywhere.

Change is on the way, but we know Big Sugar will fight to protect its rigged game with everything it’s got. 

That’s why we need your help. Our goal is simple: end the influence of Big Sugar money on our politicians, freeing them up to act in the best interests of their communities. To do that, we’re asking for commitments from public officials, candidates, and citizens in every corner of America. Will you join us in ending Big Sugar’s poisonous influence on America? Will you say no to Big Sugar Money in politics?

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