It’s been a while since Louisiana cane farmer Thomas Viator felt this good about his crop and the prospects of fetching a good price when the sugar is harvested at the end of this year.
A mild winter and rain that has tapered down to just enough has his cane looking good. Even better, though, is a consumer market that’s veering from ingesting genetically modified foods.
And in this case, that means sugar cane’s main rival—northern-grown, genetically modified sugarbeets—is falling out of favor with consumers.
“There is a demand in the market for sugar that is produced from non-GMO (genetically modified organism) sources,” said Jim Simon, president of the Thibodaux-based American Sugar Cane League.
“It is providing some benefit for us,” Simon said. “I don’t know if it’s going to be long term.”
Grown in Minnesota, North Dakota, Colorado and other far-north states, sugarbeets are grown from seeds implanted with a gene that makes it resistant to the weed killer glyphosate, commercially marketed as RoundUp. Although the beet’s sugar is deemed safe by experts, there’s been a consumer shift away from GMO foods.
Source: theadvocate.com