Weight-loss drugs and MAHA are hammering US sugar beet farmers

By Karl Plume

CHICAGO (Reuters) -For years, sugar beets were a lifeline for American farmers. More than half of domestically produced sugar comes from the white-fleshed root crops, and robust demand from the world’s top sugar-consuming nation has shielded growers from more volatile crops like corn, soybeans and wheat.

But not this year. A dramatic drop in U.S. consumption and excess imports have ballooned stockpiles. Refined beet sugar prices are down 33% from a year ago, their lowest level since 2019, and a sugar supply glut is projected to last through at least 2026.

The culprit? Americans are simply eating less sugar. Consumption started to decline in the 1990s as artificial sweeteners grew in popularity. But that longterm trend collided with inflation, which has hit spending on sweets and candy, and the rising popularity of GLP-1 weightloss drugs, which are reducing spending on food but particularly on sweets.

Nearly 9% of the U.S. population is now taking GLP-1s like Wegovy and Ozempic, and they are spending 6% less on candy and chocolate and 10% less on sweet bakery items, according to a study by OC&C Strategy Consultants.

Further, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called sugar and the ultra-processed foods that contain it “poison” in April. His Make America Healthy Again commission's first report in May referenced added sugars and sugar consumption at least 22 times, linking it to maladies like diabetes and obesity in children.

“All of a sudden consumers were starting to buy less food at the grocery store, so food manufacturing companies needed less sugar,” said Robert Johansson, former USDA chief economist and current director of economics and policy analysis for the American Sugar Alliance, an industry group that advocates for the beet and cane sugar industries.

Farmers this year planted their smallest sugar beet acreage since 1982. One near-century-old plant in Brawley, California, owned by the Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative, will shut down after processing its last crop this year, the company said, blaming import competition, post-pandemic inflation, weak sugar prices and "uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment."

Sugar beet growers maintain that consumption of sugar, in moderation, is healthy and that the MAHA commission's focus should be on unnatural sweeteners.

"You need to consume it in moderation, just like anything else," said Michigan farmer Clint Hagen, adding "Our product's natural. We'll let the science dictate that."

Hagen is tightening his belt in the face of likely financial losses from sugar beets this year, delaying needed equipment upgrades in hopes of surviving for another season.