The World’s Tooth Is Growing Sweeter

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29250, 7 July 1960, Page 19

The World’s Tooth Is Growing Sweeter

(By

WILLIAM CAVENDISH]

The world’s tooth is growing sweeter. In fact, world consumption of sugar will rise to 67 million tons a year in the next decade—about 50 per cent, more than now. The Food and Agricultural section of the United Nations, which has been carrying out an investigation into sugar as a food, shows that in many countries today sugar is cheaper in relation to other foods than pre-war. Since 1948, progress in the production and consumption of sugar has been more rapid than any other agricultural commodity. Between 1952 and the end of 1958, demand so outstripped the 15 million-ton increase in production that about 100,000 tons had to be withdrawn from reserve stocks.

But last season, there was a 1 surplus in some producing coun- ' tries—Australia, for instance. - About 1} million tons of cane stood uncut on many Commonwealth farms because the crop exceeded the harvestable and ex- : portable amount allowed under the International Sugar Agreement. Sugar prices have been dropping in recent years. The wholesale price on what is known as the “free market” is very lowlower, in fact, than most of the sugar exporters and their governments think reasonable. On the other hand, so-called “tiedmarket” prices for sugar are much above free market prices. Britain, for instance, has-been known to pay 50 per Cent, above the market price for Commonwealth sugar. When sugar prices go up it is usually due to uncertain world market conditions such as those caused by the large Russian purchase from Cuba, which had the effect of bringing down the world price paid for sugar. To appease home producers, the duty paid on imported sugar goes up—and so does the price in the shops. The sugar industry is so worldwide in character it is only natural that it should come under international agreement. Few agricultural Commodities have undergone such rapid expansion in production. The average world crop between 1934 and 1938 was 28,500,000 tons; but 1957, it had shot up to 43,000,000 tons; and the next year to 45,000,000 tons. Consumption in the United States, for example, has risen rapidly from 5,450,000 tons before the war to 8,250,000 tons. Yet sugar, both beet and cane, has only become one of the greatest and most widely distributed of world crops in modern times. In 1700, only 10,000 tons of sugar were used in Britain annually, and it was only sugar shortage, started by World War I, which set the country growing beet sugar in earnest Because of its importance as a world crop, a tremendous amount

of research is carried on in the industry. . Last year, the Australian Medal for Agricultural Science was awarded to two Queensland Scientists, who developed a remedy for a virus called ratoon stunting disease which had cost the world’s sugar-cane industry many millions of pounds a year. They are Mr C. G. Hughes and Dr. D. R. Steindl, senior pathologists with the Sugar Bureau’s experimental station Brisbane. A Challenge Their discovery has been described as the most challenging development in sugar-cane pathology for a long time. For years, some apparently normal Crops in every Sugar-producting country had failed to grow after the first year. It is estimated that in one district the virus destroyed 125,000 tons of cane a year worth £500,000. Mr Hughes and Dr. Steindl traced the cause to a virus spread by infected cuttings and devised methods of defeating it. These include the use of heat and careful field hygiene. One widely-held fallacy is that cane sugar is sweeter than beet sugar. The fact is that they are both 99.9 per cent, pure sugar Sugar beet originated from a small white root found growing on the shores of the Mediterranean and was used as.food by the Romans. In Europe, sugar beet production was first stimulated by the British Navy’s blockade of Napoleonic France, which cut it off from supplies from the West Indies. The Emperor therefore encouraged the crop in those European territories he had overrun. Sugar cane is really a grass, and is grown largely in the north of South America, in the southern United States, West Africa, India, ' Eastern China, Queensland, Java, the West Indies, Mexico, Cuba, Mauritius, the Philippines, and several less importan areas. The economy of Mauritius is mainly dependent upon sugar, and when recently the greater part of its crop was devastated by two cyclones it was regarded as an economic disaster. Because of the immense.range over which it grows, sugar is harvested at different times—in the West Indies in January, in Cuba a month earlier, in the United States in September, in South America and British Guiana in ; May and October, in Java in May, i and Formosa, the Philippines mid India in December; in Egypt in ' January; in Mauritius in August t in Australia and the Fiji Islands ' in June, and in Britain in late , autumn. So think of the planters, the i cutters, and the refiners next i time you go shopping. For the sugar business isn't all honey. — i Central Press (All Rights Re- : served). x