With defeat of Farm Bill amendment, Minnesota’s powerful sugar lobby notches another win

Last week, as the U.S. House considered its twice-a-decade Farm Bill, Minnesota’s sugar growers got the challenge they had been expecting for years: an amendment, filed to the massive nutrition and agriculture bill, that would “reform” and “modernize” the federal sugar subsidy program. The government’s system to protect the domestic sugar-growing industry, which is not based on direct subsidies but a complex set of measures designed to keep the price of sugar high, has been around for decades, and farmers credit it with shielding their business in the face of an uncertain global market.But the program has recently become a huge target for a diverse coalition of interests that loathe it — particularly, food companies who believe the policy inflates the price of sugar and hurts their businesses. “Modernizing” the sugar program, in the eyes of this camp, means undoing government protections and opening up the domestic sugar industry to market forces.