The plant will likely have little direct impact on Ontario farmers, as it will refine sugar cane imported from Central and South America, with no future plans for Canadian sugar beets. However, Sucro Can chair Don Hill said it will play a vital part in the broader Canadian food system.

Why it matters: Sugar is a cornerstone of Canadian food production

“The food industry’s very interconnected,” said Hill. “There may not be a huge connection (between) what we do and what Ontario growers do, but it all comes down to, you know, trying to create the strongest, most vibrant integrated food manufacturing possible.”

“I think Ontario … developed a very very strong food manufacturing base,” he said. “Everyone has their part, whether it’s farmers and growers or manufacturers, or ingredients suppliers like us. You need to have all the pieces working to have that vibrant economy.”

Hill said he thought competition in the sugar sector has “come up short” on supply in recent years.

“For a lot of food products, you have to have sugar supply. If you don’t have confidence that you’re going to have enough supply going forward, it’s going to make your own expansion plans very, very difficult.”

Hill said Hamilton was a natural choice for the facility due to the convenience of the location.

“Southern Ontario is like the epicentre of Canadian food manufacturing, and so all of our major customers are within a relatively short driving distance to their plants.”

“It also gives us the advantage of if we want to export sugar to the U.S., we’re obviously right at the doorstep.”

In a Jan. 16 press release, Sucro Founder and CEO Jonathan Taylor attributed the announcement to the continued success of the sugar sector.

“The sugar markets in both Canada and the United States are experiencing steady, long term, sustainable growth, and Sucro is investing to supply these growing market demands.”

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“This tentative agreement is subject to a ratification vote that will be held next week,” Rogers Sugar Inc. said in a statement today.

The workers walked off the job on Sept. 28 after, “the Company was proposing a Collective Agreement, with items that were brought up by the membership, as non-starters,” said union Public and Private Workers of Canada Local 8, which represents the workers, in a Sept. 29 news release.

The statement from Rogers contained no details as to what the tentative agreement contained.

In September, the union said it would not entertain “continuous shifting” and running the refinery 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A Sept. 25 news release said the union was also seeking increases in benefits and protection from inflation and rising costs of living among other demands.

The strike, which sparked sugar shortages for businesses like bakeries western Canadian grocery stores, led the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers to call for a national domestic sugar policy to shift focus to home-grown sugar beet production.

The group said its growers produce only eight per cent of the sugar sold in Canada, while the remainder is imported cane sugar. The goal of a domestic sugar policy, as laid out by the Alberta group and its national counterpart, the Canadian Sugar Beet Growers Association, would be to double sugar beets’ market foothold to 16 per cent of national sugar consumption. This would drive investment in refineries and open new grower opportunities.

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The Alberta Sugar Beet Growers want a national domestic sugar policy, which the organization says could lay the foundation for resurgence in the sector.

Such a policy would regulate the amount of sugar imported into Canada from cane sugar-producing countries like Brazil and India. That would shift focus to home-grown sugar beet production and processing.

“We’re the only G7 country that does not have a domestic sugar policy,” said Jennifer Crowson, the grower group’s executive director. “A sugar policy would protect the sugar beet market and the ability for us to expand the industry.”

The group says its growers produce only eight per cent of the sugar sold in Canada, while the remainder is imported cane sugar. The immediate goal of a domestic sugar policy, as laid out by the Alberta group and its national counterpart, the Canadian Sugar Beet Growers Association, would be to double sugar beets’ market foothold to 16 per cent of national sugar consumption. This would drive investment in refineries and open new grower opportunities.

“Other provinces like Manitoba used to produce sugar beets. If there was a sugar policy, we would be able to expand the market and potentially have other provinces start growing sugar beets again,” said Crowson.

Corporations have expressed interest in building beet sugar infrastructure if there was a policy in place, she added.

“Other industry people and corporations say that, in the event that there was a policy, they would come and build another processing plant.”

There’s at least one major hurdle: federal approval of a policy. That process is coming along slowly, but surely, Crowson said.

“It’s been a work in progress for a while, but we have recently been able to have a few meetings with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada,” she said. “We’re creating a working group going forward to look at some of the pieces of what domestic sugar policy could look like.”

Sugar shortage

Canadian sugar has featured in the news recently due to the ongoing strike at a Vancouver sugar processing facility that created a sugar shortage on store shelves.

Although a national sugar policy wouldn’t affect the chances of similar strike action, the expected industry growth could create more supply chain options in the event of disruption, proponents say.

“With the strike right now, the biggest factor is they’re just not operating, not that their source of sugar is not there,” said Crowson. “So as far as domestic sugar policy, it would secure that Canada has a more sustainable product right here that’s 100 per cent Canadian.”

The sugar beets under irrigation in southern Alberta and processed at the Lantic plant in Taber, Alta., represent almost the entirety of sugar production in Canada, said Crowson.

Rogers Sugar is the holding company of Lantic Inc., formed when Rogers Sugar Ltd. and Lantic Sugar Limited merged in 2008.

“There are beets that are grown in Ontario, but they’re exported to Michigan to be processed, so that doesn’t stay within Canada,” says Crowson. “So, we are the only source of 100 per cent Canadian sugar in Canada.”

Alberta’s sugar beet production comprises about 200 farm families who harvest about 840,000 tonnes of sugar beets every year.
There are three other sugar refineries under the company’s banner (Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto) but they process cane sugar sourced from India, Brazil and Vietnam.

Today, the Canadian sugar beet industry operates under a supply managed, quota-based system, said Crowson.

The ASBG manages these producer quotas from its permanent quota of 28,000-33,895 acres per year, depending on capacity of the Taber refinery. Contracted acreage can be reduced if the refinery is unable to process the permanent quota in a given year.

“The processor tells us how much we can grow each year and usually what happens is we end up with a 17 to 20 per cent reduction from our permanent quota,” she said.

“What that means, going into next year’s system, is out of that 33,895 acres, we’re going to have a 17 per cent reduction. That will be the maximum amount of acres our growers are able to grow.”

Any beets that don’t make it to the plant become a storage challenge for producers, she added. They have no other marketing options.

“The beets are stored in piles outside so as winter carries on, the beets do get frozen. That’s OK, but they can only stay frozen and still be a good product for so long. So come the end of February or beginning of March … those beets will start to deteriorate.”

In addition, it’s not uncommon in southern Alberta to get sudden stretches of warm weather that hasten beet deterioration. The latest harvest in November brought in 856,636 tonnes at an extractable sugar rate of just over 17 per cent.

Yield was high, considering that the number of planted acres was down. Due to weather and the lateness of the processor contract, producers grew 26,000 acres as opposed to the typical 28,000, Crowson noted.

— Jeff Melchior reports for Alberta Farmer Express from Edmonton.

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Why it matters: Governments around the world are changing how sugar is labelled and used in food products, so food and beverage manufacturers are looking for alternatives without having to sacrifice taste or other attributes.

The company is working to commercialize protein-based natural sweetener called Brazzein. It is found in the oubli berry that grows in West Africa, but Biofect isn’t planning to go into berry production. Instead, the four co-founders have developed a platform that lets them produce Brazzein using precision fermentation.

“I was 26, pre-diabetic, overweight and the doctor wanted to put me on statins. I needed to solve my health issue and what worked was removing sugar,” says CEO Ralph Christian Delos Santos, of what ultimately kindled his interest in working on a sugar substitute.

“Brazzein is unique because it is a protein and it’s 2,000 times sweeter than sugar, so a little bit goes a long way. Canada ranks number two in diabetes prevalence amongst its OECD peer countries, and Brazzein has the potential to solve Canada’s diabetes epidemic,” he says.

Biofect has developed proprietary microbes that they feed in a fermentation tank with low value industry byproducts like starch. The microbes turn that starch into Brazzein, which is then purified into a white powder that can be used as a substitute sugar ingredient in food and beverage applications.

The team has completed its proof of concept and is now working to scale up production and refine its product so it can fit into a wide range of product types and formulations.

In addition to serving as a sweetener, sugar is also used for texturizing, as a bulking substance and to provide mouth feel, so Biofect is working on projects with different partners to address those needs.

“Beverages are our main approach now. To get to confectionary, candy or cakes, you need texturizing abilities, so that’s a later market,” says Santos. “The underlying intellectual property is our platform, which we are developing too. Brazzein is a proof point for the platform; we can also produce other proteins like casein, for example.”

Biofect is partnering with three flavour houses interested in buying the product, with a long-term goal of being market-ready by 2026. The company’s next two immediate milestones are patenting their IP and securing “Generally Regarded As Safe” regulatory approval.

To that end, Biofect is conducting tests to prove the protein stemming from its fermenters is identical to what is produced by nature.

“It is such an honour to win this competition. To be recognized is validation that what we’re building is hitting a pain point and that lets us keep going,” Santos says.

“This is one of many steps for us to get to our destination, and we’ve been privileged with so many people interested in our work . It takes a village to build it.”

Biofect Innovations was one of five participants in the competition, which was held at the University of Guelph and sponsored by the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance, RHA Partners, the 519 Growth Fund and AgExpert.

Food Security Structures Canada won the People’s Choice Award with its moveable, modular Agrotunnel concept to support year-round food production. According to co-founder Kim Parker, one Agrotunnel has the potential to produce the same yield of fruits, vegetables and herbs as six shipping container-based indoor farms, due in large part to its proprietary grow light system.

Other competitors included Psigryph Inc., developer of Nanopect technology that improves the ability of medical, crop protection or nutrition products to be absorbed by plants, animals or people; Terra Optima Labs, which converts food waste into soil amendments; and VetsOn, a virtual healthcare platform for veterinarians to make large animal practices more effective.

Speaking on behalf of the judging panel, Deb Stark, former deputy minister at the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food & Rural Affairs, noted the breadth of ag tech innovation at the event bodes well for the future of the sector.

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The West African country has a history of sometimes deadly conflict between local communities and foreign companies that have cleared huge tracts of land for palm oil and sugarcane plantations in recent years.

Locals have complained of environmental damage, losing their livelihoods and not being fairly compensated for their land. Under the current system, landowners get an annual rent of $2.50 per acre, which was determined by the state.

The Customary Land Rights Act and the Land Commission Act, both enacted on Monday, empower local landowners to negotiate the value of their land with investors and prevent it being leased out without their express consent.

Campaigners and locals praised the move, while one palm oil company executive said it would spell the end of investment.

“To our knowledge there is not a legal regime anywhere, in either hemisphere that grants such robust rights to communities facing harm,” said Eleanor Thompson of Namati, an international legal advocacy group.

A director of SOCFIN, the biggest agribusiness company in Sierra Leone, called it a “dream of NGOs.”

“Certainly it will block any investment… It makes things very expensive and we are all prone to enormous blackmail by various communities,” Gerben Haringsma added.

The Luxembourg-based company has invested more than $150 million in palm oil farming in Sierra Leone. It has also frequently clashed with local landowners.

Lands Minister Turad Senessie said the new laws would encourage investment by ensuring peace and order.

“This is a win-win situation for both business and Sierra Leoneans including rural landowners,” he told Reuters.

One of the laws will also end a colonial-era provision that bars descendants of freed slaves from owning land outside the capital, Freetown.

— Reporting for Reuters by Umaru Fofana.

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Container-based transportation has been hit by sky-high costs and delays amid booming shipping demand, while container terminals at ports struggle to deal with the flow.

Commodities such as refined sugar, coffee, rice, cotton and cocoa have moved from dry bulk vessels to containers in the past since the large boxes were more practical and offered good quality control. But now shippers are moving back, at least temporarily.

“Around 80 per cent of the trade on refined sugar was done using containers before the pandemic. This has now fallen to around 60 per cent,” said Paulo Roberto de Souza, CEO of Alvean Sugar, the world’s largest sugar trader.

According to Souza, the change is only not bigger because there are not a lot of small vessels available in the market.

Data from shipping agency Williams regarding port movement in Brazil, the world’s largest sugar exporter, shows that volumes of refined sugar transported using containers fell 48 per cent in June and July (latest data available) compared to the previous year.

Bob Cymbala, owner at food trader A+J Global USA, based in Vancouver, said that some clients are turning down offers due to high prices for container freight, looking for shipping alternatives instead.

One of his clients, a rice exporter in India, is looking to use a dry bulk cargo to ship to Western Africa a volume of rice equivalent to 10 full containers.

Coffee exporters are not considering a change away from containers yet, besides the difficulties, mostly due to concerns over quality. They say containers, with proper lining, better preserve coffee characteristics such as smell and taste.

— Reporting for Reuters by Marcelo Teixeira.

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In a news release expressing disappointment with many of the concessions granted during trade talks, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture acknowledged the federal government achieved “beneficial results” for some sectors within agriculture, such as increased U.S. market access for Canadian sugar beet producers.

Why it matters: Canada gained a larger, though still small share of the U.S. sugar beet market under the new USMCA trade deal, which is positive for Alberta sugarbeet growers.

This market access, while significant to sugar beet growers in Alberta, has little relevance to their Ontario counterparts.

According to information from the Canadian Sugar Institute lobby group, the United States government intervenes in its sugar market to support domestic production of both cane and beet sugar. This artificially supports domestic sugar prices above world and Canadian price levels, restricts imports and uses a special re-export program to encourage exports of sugar and sugar-containing products.

Under the previous North American Free Trade Agreement, Canadian sugar exports were limited to 1/10th of one per cent of the 10.5 million tonne U.S. sugar market. That translates to 10,300 tonnes of beet sugar processed by Lantic Inc. in Taber, Alta., — from sugar beets grown by Alberta farmers — and 59,250 tonnes of sugar-containing products, which are produced in Eastern Canada, primarily at two Ontario blending facilities.

The new USMCA will allow an additional 9,600 tonnes in both divisions.

Arnie Bergen-Henengouwen, president of the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers and board member for the Canadian Sugar Beet Growers Association, said the concession to allow the additional tonnage was based on an agreement already part of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership. And while Canada’s share of the American sugar market remains small, he said it’s still significant to 200 growers supplying the Taber processing plant.

He said the additional market access stabilizes the industry, and he hoped it would encourage investment in the processing plant.

“For [the United States] it was a small give. The significance to us is much greater than it is to them,” Bergen-Henengouwen said.

No effect on whole beet exports

As of 2016, Statistics Canada reports 318 farms growing 38,456 acres of sugar beets nationwide. Ontario houses 138 of those producers, with 10,816 acres reported as of 2011. Acreage for 2016 is not available.

Sandra Marsden, president of the Canadian Sugar Institute, said the new market access is only relevant to sugar beet producers whose produce is refined within Canada.

Ontario sugar beet growers export their whole crops to the U.S., where they are processed by Michigan Sugar, which lists itself as producing an average of one billion pounds of sugar each year, making it the third-largest sugar beet processor in the United States. Consequently, Ontario sugar beets are not affected by the USMCA and will continue to be freely exported without trade restrictions.

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Brazil is the top global exporter of soybeans, sugar, coffee and chickens. The strike over high fuel prices has paralyzed Latin America’s largest economy, emptied Brazilian roadways and left major cities running short on food, gasoline and medical supplies.

Farmers and merchants have been unable to get their supplies to key ports during the nine days of industrial action. The strike has been slow to unwind even after the government agreed to subsidize diesel prices in a bid to end protests.

The strike has had a devastating impact on livestock. Tens of millions of chickens have been killed because feed supplies have failed. If they begin to starve, chickens start eating each other, so meat packers have culled flocks quickly, according to poultry and pork processing association ABPA.

“Lack of feed leads chicken to start pecking each other and blood and cuts appear, making them confuse flesh for food. That’s when cannibalism starts,” an industry source said on condition of anonymity because the person is not authorized to speak to the media.

Some 70 million chickens had died as of Monday, ABPA said, adding that farmers were running out of space to dispose of their carcasses. Brazil is the world’s biggest chicken exporter, supplying over a third of all shipments. The Latin American country is a big supplier of chicken to Asia and the Middle East.

ABPA estimated that the country had lost 120,000 tonnes in potential exports since truckers began protesting.

Nearly 4,000 trucks of beef are sitting on roadsides throughout the country, and the meat will soon rot, said beef packer trade group Abiec. Only two of Brazil’s 109 beef processing plants continued to operate, according to Abiec, and even those plants were working at half their capacity.

Brazilian beef processors said they had lost an estimated 40,000 tonnes of potential exports worth US$170 million since the strike began.

Force majeure considered

Soybean exporters are considering declaring force majeure on shipments, a contractual clause that releases them from obligations because of events beyond their control, according to Anec, a trade group representing grains exporters such Archer Daniels Midland and Louis Dreyfus.

No trucks had delivered soybeans to Santos, the largest port in Latin America, since the protests started on May 21, an Anec exporters group spokesperson said.

Brazil is one of the biggest suppliers to top buyer China.

Soy crushers group Abiove said on Tuesday all soy crushing units had ground to a halt in Brazil because of lack of supplies.

“There are reports that road blockades have been lifted in some places but we don’t know if the units started receiving raw materials to resume crushing,” an Abiove representative told Reuters on Tuesday.

International sugar futures notched their biggest percentage one-week rally so far this year as the strike prompted worries that millers in the world’s top sugar producer and exporter would slow crushing and be unable to get product to ports.

Cane harvesting in Brazil’s center-south, the world’s largest cane belt, has slowed because of fuel shortages.

As many as 340 mills in Brazil’s centre-south could be shut by Thursday if the strike persists, up from 220 already shut, said trade group Forum Nacional Sucroenergetico late on Monday.

Around 150 sugar mills have shut down in the state of Sao Paulo, trade group UNICA said in a statement on Monday. About 60 percent of the country’s ethanol and sugar are produced in the state.

Brazil’s top coffee exporter Cooxupe warned foreign clients last week about possible shipping delays due to the protests.

Brazil is the biggest grower and exporter of coffee, and the strike helped drive international benchmark Arabica coffee futures on ICE up two per cent to just above US$1.20/lb. last week. The strike came just ahead of Brazil’s main arabica harvest.

The Brazilian coffee industry is losing an estimated 70 million reais (C$24.3 million) per day due to the protests, trade group Abic said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ana Mano and Jose Roberto Gomes in Sao Paulo; additional reporting by Marcy Nicholson and Chris Prentice in New York.

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Tests carried out by a team from the University of Illinois showed bees preferred to collect sugar syrup laced with the fungicide chlorothalonil over sugar syrup alone.

The finding follows other studies linking fungicides to a worldwide plunge in honeybee and wild bee populations which are crucial for pollinating crops.

“Bees are kind of like humans in that they sometimes like things that aren’t necessarily good for them,” said University of Illinois entomology professor May Berenbaum, who led the research.

She said fungicides were bad news for bees because they could exacerbate the toxicity of pesticides and kill off beneficial fungi in hives.

Her team set up two feeding stations in an enclosure allowing the bees to choose sugar syrup laced with a test chemical or without. The chemicals included three fungicides and two herbicides at various concentrations.

The researchers were taken aback to find the bees choosing one of the fungicides.

Chlorothalonil, sold under various brand names including Syngenta’s Bravo, is registered in Canada for disease control in various pulse, fruit and vegetable crops and in wheat.

“It was a surprise when they actually liked them,” Berenbaum told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone, adding that it could explain why fungicide contamination in hives was so common.

“This is not anything that anyone had even thought about before so we need to readjust our focus because there certainly could be implications for agriculture…”

However, she said the bees actively avoided a second tested fungicide and were neutral about a third.

The scientists said the findings were “worrisome” in light of research showing fungicides interfere with honey bees’ ability to metabolize pesticides used by beekeepers to kill parasitic mites that infest their hives.

The scientists were also surprised to find the bees showed a taste for the widely used herbicide glyphosate.

A study by the Center for Biological Diversity last year said hundreds of native bee species in North America and Hawaii were sliding towards extinction.

It said bees provided more than US$3 billion in fruit-pollination services each year in the U.S.

Experts have blamed habitat loss, heavy pesticide use, climate change and increasing urbanization for declining numbers.

The United Nations recently announced an annual World Bee Day on May 20 to raise awareness of their importance and declining numbers.

— Reporting by Emma Batha for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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Florida sugar and citrus processors rushed to secure rail cars and equipment that could be crushed, blocked or turned into flying projectiles. Cattlemen opened up their fences and moved animals to higher ground and wooded areas, which can offer some relief from high winds.

To the north, cotton farmers in North and South Carolina fretted their fields might be facing a fate similar to their Texas counterparts. Late last month, Hurricane Harvey, which became a tropical storm after making landfall in Texas, destroyed an estimated $150 million worth of cotton, ripping the bolls off plants and leaving white fiber strewn across fields (all figures US$).

At U.S. Sugar, a Clewiston, Florida-based sugar producer that farms, mills and refines sugar, staff are drawing down water levels in farm canals, securing processing facilities and making plans for post-storm cleanup, company spokeswoman Judy Sanchez said.

“There’s not a thing we can do about the cane fields and orange groves, but pray,” said Adam H. Putnam, commissioner of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

One particularly keen concern for the sugar industry: How badly can the hurricane damage the sugar cane fields, as harvest is set to begin on Oct. 1?

Worries about Hurricane Irma hitting growing regions in the Caribbean and Florida helped boost raw sugar futures on the Intercontinental Exchange on Wednesday. Orange concentrate futures for November delivery also jumped Wednesday to $1.499 per pound, the highest since early May.

Florida sugar cane accounts for nearly a quarter of sugar produced in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The hurricane also could potentially impact sugar prices through oil and ethanol prices, said James Liddiard, analyst at Agrilion Commodity Advisors in New York. Sugar prices often track energy prices as petroleum is a key input cost and millers can divert cane to sugar or ethanol.

State officials in Florida called for evacuations ahead of the storm’s expected landfall there this weekend, as the potentially catastrophic hurricane slammed through Caribbean islands with pounding winds, rain and surging surf.

Hurricane Irma is expected to impact the U.S. along the eastern coast of Florida, according to the National Weather Service, before moving on to Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina — states known for cotton, grain and livestock production.

The biggest risk the North Carolina cotton crops faces is wind, which would blow cotton plants over, said Guy Collins, a cotton extension associate professor and specialist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Heavy rain too could push the cotton bolls to the wet ground and cause rot.

North and South Carolina represent about five per cent of cotton acres planted this year, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

Storm prep led livestock operators in North Carolina, the country’s second-largest producer of hogs and turkeys, to stock their grain bins with extra feed, in case the roads washed out.

Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest hog producer and processor owned by Hong Kong-based WH Group, was closely monitoring pits holding liquid hog waste, said company spokeswoman Kathleen Kirkham.

At Prestage Farms, staff are testing backup generators and making sure there is ample fuel to keep them running. They are also preparing to shutter the company’s turkey processing plant in St. Paul, N.C. if the storm turns dangerous to that area.

“Planning can go a long way,” said Ron Prestage of the Clinton, N.C.-based hog and turkey producer. “We plan for the worst and hope for the best.”

— Reporting for Reuters by P.J. Huffstutter in Chicago and Renita D. Young in New York; additional reporting by Theopolis Waters in Chicago.

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