Big Corn prepares for battle against Big Sugar

WASHINGTON —For decades, it’s been an unspoken rule among Washington’s agricultural lobbyists: advocates for one crop do not attack other crops, so that everyone’s benefits can be protected.

But a leading member of the traditionally united community plans to do just that: the Corn Refiners Association is about to invest heavily in an effort to unwind the lucrative breaks afforded to sugar, which are among the most generous in U.S. agriculture.

The Corn Refiners Association, representing companies that produce highfructose corn syrup, just hired 10 lobbyists for an aggressive, unorthodox attack on the federal sugar program just a year after a new farm bill was signed into law.

Their first target is the agriculture appropriations bill, now moving through a House committee.

While other crop subsidies have withered, Wash- ington’s taste for been constant.

The sugar program, which has existed in various forms since the 1930s, uses an elaborate system of import quotas, price floors and taxpayer-backed loans to prop up domestic growers, which number fewer than 4,500.

Sugar’s protected status is largely explained by the sophistication and clout of a small but wealthy interest group.

“While every other farm support program has received multiple rounds of reforms, big sugar has not been touched,” said John Bode, CEO of the Corn Refiners group.

The American Sugar Alliance, through communications director Phillip Hayes, declined to comment on this story. The group has long argued that sugar price supports are needed to protect American jobs from foreign competition.

Corn and sugar producers have clashed repeatedly over the relative health benefits of pure sugar vis-a-vis high fructose corn syrup. For the most part, this battle has taken place in obscure medical journals and before health advisory panels.

In the process, high fructose corn syrup has lost market share to sugar.

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