Sugarcane Farming in the United States (NAICS 11193)

An investor's primer. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 11193 is a five-digit industry in U.S. agriculture. It contains exactly one detailed industry — 111930, Sugarcane Farming — so this level and its child are effectively the same thing. Written for both public-market and private investors.

How to read this page. 11193 is a single-child "pass-through" level: everything it covers is 111930. This is a short rollup that gives the level's own headline figures and points you to the full leaf primer. For complete detail — the growers, the mills, the sugar program, how the money works, and the risks — read the 111930 primer.

1. Overview

Sugarcane farming is a small, geographically concentrated, capital-intensive corner of American agriculture with an outsized political footprint. Commercial production survives in just two states — Florida and Louisiana — after Hawaii's last mill closed in 2016 and Texas effectively exited around 2024 [4][7][8]. Fewer than 800 farms grow the crop, but they sit behind a dozen-plus raw-sugar mills and a federal price-support program that holds U.S. sugar prices well above the world market [3][5][6][8]. Cane and sugarbeets together supply about half the sugar Americans eat (the rest is imported), with cane accounting for roughly 44% of domestic production [4].

Value in this business comes from land and water, cane yield, sugar recovery per ton, mill access, byproducts, and government-supported pricing — not acreage alone. The federal sugar program dampens the price swings that batter most crop producers, which is why this is best understood as a defensive, land-heavy physical-asset industry rather than a growth story.

2. What's inside — and why the level equals its one child

NAICS 11193 has a single detailed child, 111930 Sugarcane Farming. At the five-digit level there is nothing else to roll up: the industry is the one industry beneath it. So every number, driver, and risk at 11193 is simply 111930's.

Scope. This code is the farming of sugarcane — growing and harvesting the cane stalk [2]. It stops at the field edge. Milling and refining cane into sugar are counted in manufacturing (NAICS 311314, Cane Sugar Manufacturing), and the separate beet-sugar farming industry is 111991 — neither is inside 11193 [2]. For the full scope discussion (ratooning, the one-day mill window, the Florida "grinding season," and adjacent codes), see the 111930 primer.

3. How big it is

Our ground-truth federal stats file for this level (stats-11193.md) contains no ingested metrics, so the figures below are drawn from the cited federal sources in the child (111930) primer and labeled as such. Because 11193 equals 111930, these are one and the same.

Because this is a crop-farming industry, the standard federal business statistics (the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns, which mainly counts employers) largely miss it. Farms are surveyed instead through USDA's (U.S. Department of Agriculture) Census of Agriculture, which counts any operation selling at least $1,000 of farm products. Treat any employer-based "number of establishments" figure for this code as an undercount; small and family ownership dominates, especially in Louisiana. The one federal business-size figure available is the SBA (Small Business Administration) size standard: a sugarcane farm is "small" if its average annual receipts are $5 million or less [1] — a program-eligibility threshold, not an industry revenue estimate, which our ground-truth file does not provide (so we state none).

STRV = short tons, raw value (the standard sugar unit); NASS = USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service; ERS = its Economic Research Service. The long-run trend is consolidation — fewer farms, larger average size [3][4]. The crop is economically tiny but politically weighty: ERS notes cane and beet crops combined are less than 1% of all U.S. farm cash receipts [4].

4. Investable universe — where value concentrates

Because 11193 has one child, all industry value sits in 111930's producers. There is no publicly traded, pure-play U.S. sugarcane farm. Value concentrates in a handful of privately held growers/millers — U.S. Sugar (employee-owned via an ESOP), Florida Crystals (the Fanjul family), the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida, and Louisiana grower cooperatives and family operators. Public-market exposure is only indirect: foreign cane-and-ethanol producers, a Florida land company, diversified crop processors, farmland REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts), and a world-sugar-futures ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund). See Section 4 of the 111930 primer for the full name-by-name table.

5. How the money works

Most growers don't sell "sugar" — they deliver cane to a mill and are paid a regulated minimum share of the sugar and molasses the mill recovers, minus a processing charge [5][6]. Returns turn on yield and sugar recovery (weather-driven), input costs (fertilizer and diesel have pushed Louisiana breakevens up sharply), mill reliability, and land, because the federal program caps the output price and so decouples this business from the wild swings of most commodities. Byproducts — bagasse burned for power, plus molasses — add secondary revenue. Full mechanics, budgets, and price levels are in the 111930 primer.

6. Demand drivers

Sugar is a large, mature, slow-growth staple: ERS forecasts 2026/27 U.S. sugar use near 12.57 million STRV [6]. But demand for U.S.-grown cane specifically is set less by dinner tables than by policy — marketing allotments and import quotas decide how much of the market domestic growers serve. Cane also competes with beet sugar, imported sugar, and high-fructose corn syrup, while sugar-reduction health pressure caps volume and a "real cane sugar" consumer swing supports it. See Section 6 of the child primer.

7. Regulation

The U.S. Sugar Program is the defining feature of this industry. It pays no cash subsidy; it props up the price through supply management — price-support loans to processors, marketing allotments, and tariff-rate quotas on imports, plus the Mexico Suspension Agreements [5][6]. The combined effect is U.S. prices well above world levels. Environmental rules (Everglades water-quality and phosphorus limits, field-burning rules) and labor rules (the H-2A seasonal-worker program) are the other heavy hands. Full detail — loan rates, allotment mechanics, quota levels — is in Section 7 of the 111930 primer.

8. Consolidation

This is a consolidating, capital-intensive oligopoly at the growing/milling level. The mill is the strategic bottleneck: cane must reach a processor within about a day of cutting, so growers are tied to nearby mills. Farm numbers have fallen for decades while average farm size has risen, and mills have closed across the board — leaving roughly a dozen-plus, concentrated in Louisiana and Florida [3][4][7][8]. Vertical integration is the moat in Florida, where leaders grow, mill, refine, power, and brand. Barriers to entry — subtropical land, a nearby mill, specialized equipment, and protected-market allotment rights — make new entry nearly impossible. See Section 8 of the child primer.

9. Risks

The headline risks are the child's: policy risk (the sugar program is both foundation and biggest uncertainty), trade risk (Mexico agreements, quota levels), weather and climate (freezes, hurricanes, drought), crop and pest risk, mill concentration (one outage hits many growers), an input-cost squeeze against a policy-capped output price, environmental and land pressure in Florida, and labor availability. For investors specifically, the near-total absence of listed U.S. pure-plays means direct exposure is private and illiquid. Full list in Section 9 of the 111930 primer.

10. How to invest and outlook

Public-market routes are all imperfect proxies: the Teucrium Sugar ETF (CANE) or ICE (Intercontinental Exchange) No. 11 futures for the world price; foreign cane-and-ethanol producers Adecoagro (NYSE: AGRO) and Cosan (NYSE: CSAN) for real but non-U.S. cane; ADM (NYSE: ADM) and Bunge (NYSE: BG) for diversified small-sugar exposure; and land plays — Alico (NASDAQ: ALCO), farmland REITs Gladstone Land (NASDAQ: LAND) and Farmland Partners (NYSE: FPI), and Alexander & Baldwin (NYSE: ALEX). The real industry is private: farmland ownership or lease in Florida's Everglades Agricultural Area or Louisiana's cane parishes, or stakes in mills and grower operations.

Outlook: the base case is continuity — a protected, slowly consolidating physical-asset industry that rewards low-cost, high-yield, mill-adjacent operators and offers stable, not spectacular, returns to those who can access it directly. For most investors, the larger opportunity is the land under the cane rather than the cane itself. For the complete analysis, diligence checklist, and indicators to watch, read the 111930 primer.

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Sources

Drawn from the child (111930) primer; our ground-truth stats file for 11193 contained no ingested metrics.

1. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Size Standards (NAICS 111930, $5 million receipts), 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
2. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS: 111930 Sugarcane Farming (and adjacent codes 311314, 111991). https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=111930&year=2022
3. Southern Ag Today (Univ. of Arkansas / USDA data), "Sugarbeet and Sugarcane Production and Farm Trends," 2025 (2022 Census of Agriculture figures). https://southernagtoday.org/2025/06/25/sugarbeet-and-sugarcane-production-and-farm-trends/
4. USDA Economic Research Service, "Sugar and Sweeteners — Background" (production shares; farm decline; <1% of farm cash receipts). https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/sugar-and-sweeteners/background
5. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Crop Production / State Agriculture Overview, Florida & Louisiana, 2024–2025 (acres, yields, tons). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/
6. USDA Economic Research Service, Sugar and Sweeteners — Price Spreads / Market Outlook (farm-gate value; ~4.0M tons raw sugar; 2026/27 use ~12.57M STRV). https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/sugar-and-sweeteners/
7. Honolulu Star-Advertiser, "Hawaii's sugar-producing era ends" (Alexander & Baldwin closes HC&S, Maui, 2016). https://www.staradvertiser.com/2016/12/13/hawaii-news/hawaiis-sugar-producing-era-ends-with-a-final-load-of-cane-from-mauis-hcs-fields/
8. CropFarming.org, "Sugarcane Mills in the United States: Louisiana and Florida," 2026 (mill counts; Texas mill closure ~2024). https://cropfarming.org/sugarcane-mills-in-the-united-states/