Not So Sweet News – Sugar Prices Up

(AP) – Sugar prices are soaring in many places. That’s largely due to production shortfalls in key exporters India and Thailand that are partly blamed on the El Nino. The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization is predicting a 2% decline in production this year. Increasingly, sugar is being used for biofuels like ethanol, so global sugar buffer stocks are at their lowest since 2009. Brazil’s harvest next year will help, but that’s months away. Experts say the concern is over shortfalls in the next few months, especially for poor countries that depend on expensive sugar imports, like much of sub-Saharan Africa.