Sugarcane Farming in the United States (NAICS 111930)

An investor's primer. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 111930 covers U.S. farms whose main business is growing sugarcane. Written for both public-market and private investors.

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][25][29]. Fewer than 800 farms grow the crop, but they sit behind roughly a dozen-plus raw-sugar mills and a federal price-support program that holds U.S. sugar prices well above the world market [3][10][11][29]. 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. A grower's revenue is, in form, simple: tons of cane harvested × sugar (and molasses) recovered per ton × the price of sugar, minus the cost of land, fertilizer, diesel, labor, and milling. The federal sugar program dampens the price swings that batter most crop producers, which is exactly why this is best understood as a defensive, land-heavy physical-asset industry rather than a growth story.

Public vs. private ways in. There is effectively no pure-play U.S. sugarcane-farming stock. The largest American producers are privately held — an employee-owned company (U.S. Sugar), a family dynasty (the Fanjuls' Florida Crystals), and grower cooperatives. Public-market exposure is indirect: foreign cane-and-ethanol producers, a Florida land company, diversified crop processors, farmland REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts), and a sugar-futures ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund). The cleanest way to own the actual industry is private — farmland in the growing regions, or a stake in a grower or mill.

2. What it is and how it's structured

Scope. NAICS 111930 is the farming of sugarcane — growing and harvesting the cane stalk [2]. Sugarcane is a perennial grass: a field is planted once and "ratooned" (cut and regrown) for roughly two to four harvests before replanting. Because sucrose degrades quickly after cutting, cane must be milled within about a day of harvest — a fact that shapes the entire industry's geography [9]. Harvest in Florida runs a long "grinding season" from late fall into spring; Louisiana's is shorter and frost-limited.

What it excludes (adjacent NAICS codes). Turning cane into sugar happens in a mill and then a refinery, counted in manufacturing, not farming [2]:

• 311314 – Cane Sugar Manufacturing (mills and refineries that make raw and refined sugar).
• 111991 – Sugar Beet Farming — the separate beet-sugar farming industry; beets, not cane, supply the other ~56% of U.S. sugar [4].
• 115112 / 115113 — contract soil-preparation/planting and contract crop-harvesting services.
• 111998 – All Other Miscellaneous Crop Farming (explicitly excludes cane and beets).
• 325193 – Ethyl Alcohol Manufacturing would capture cane ethanol, which is negligible in the U.S. (unlike Brazil).

Ownership mix. Two structures dominate. In Florida (mainly the Everglades Agricultural Area, or EAA, south of Lake Okeechobee), a few large vertically integrated companies grow cane on their own land and run their own mills — the farm and the factory are one business. UF/IFAS (University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences) estimates the mills grow roughly two-thirds of Florida's cane and independent farmers grow the rest [9]. In Louisiana (the warm southern and river parishes), hundreds of independent family farms grow cane and deliver it to grower-owned cooperative or private mills they don't individually control. That is why Louisiana still has more farms than Florida even though Florida grows more sugar per farm [3]. Almost none of these owners are publicly traded.

3. How big it is

Because this is a crop-farming industry, the standard federal business statistics that cover most sectors — the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns, which primarily counts establishments with paid employees — largely miss it. Farms are surveyed instead through USDA's (U.S. Department of Agriculture) Census of Agriculture, which counts any operation selling (or normally selling) at least $1,000 of farm products. Treat any employer-based "number of establishments" figure for this code as an undercount; the authoritative picture is the USDA farm data below. The only federal business-size figure in our ground-truth dataset is the SBA (Small Business Administration) size standard: a sugarcane farm is "small" if its average annual receipts are $5 million or less [1]. That is a program-eligibility threshold, not an estimate of industry revenue — which our ground-truth file does not provide, so we do not state one.

Federal farm statistics (USDA):

STRV = short tons, raw value, the standard sugar-industry unit. NASS = USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service; ERS = its Economic Research Service. The long-run trend is consolidation: farm numbers have fallen and average farm size has risen since the 1990s [3][4]. The crop is economically tiny but politically weighty — ERS notes cane and beet crops combined make up less than 1% of all U.S. farm cash receipts [4]. (As a scale check on value: USDA's farm-to-consumer data put the average farmer price near $60.90 per ton of cane against roughly 32 million tons produced [6].)

4. The investable universe

There is no publicly traded, pure-play U.S. sugarcane farm. The table separates the (small, indirect) public options from the private owners who actually control most U.S. cane. Tickers below are for reference — none is a clean bet on U.S. cane-farming economics.

Public / listed exposure (all indirect):

Private U.S. producers (who actually grow the cane):

• U.S. Sugar — Clewiston, FL; the largest U.S. cane producer by volume. Reports farming ~245,000 acres (company farm acreage, not all sugarcane), vertically integrated from field to refinery. Employee-owned via an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan); ~2,500 employees [16].
• Florida Crystals — owned by the Fanjul family; reports more than 190,000 acres and runs two mills. Co-owns ASR Group (Domino, C&H, Florida Crystals brands), the world's largest cane-sugar refiner [17][18].
• Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida — ~39 grower-members farming ~70,000 acres, one mill, producing 400,000+ tons of raw sugar a year; co-owns ASR Group with the Fanjuls [18][19].
• Sugar Growers and Refiners of Louisiana (SUGAR) — a grower/mill marketing cooperative representing eight Louisiana mills and their growers; reports ~2 billion pounds of member sugar production a year [20].
• M.A. Patout & Son — family-owned Louisiana operator with a plantation and three mill subsidiaries, ~4.6 million tons of annual cane capacity [21].
• Beyond these, hundreds of independent Louisiana family farms deliver to grower-owned/private mills (represented industry-wide by the American Sugar Cane League). Individually small; none listed.

Bottom line: to own the U.S. cane-farming business directly you buy farmland or a private stake; to trade the price of sugar you use futures, CANE, or the foreign/diversified names above.

5. How the money works

Most growers don't sell "sugar" — they deliver cane to a mill and are paid a share of the sugar and molasses the mill recovers. The chain runs: land and water → seed cane and field inputs → harvest and haul → mill → raw sugar, molasses, and bagasse → refinery, food, or energy markets. The levers:

• Yield and recovery. EAA cane runs ~30–40 tons per acre (Florida averaged ~42 tons/ac in the 2025 crop; Louisiana ~32) [5][9]. Sugar extraction averages roughly 0.125 pounds of raw sugar per pound of cane [6]. Higher-sucrose varieties and good weather lift both tonnage and sugar per ton.
• The grower–mill split. Federal regulation requires processors to pay growers a minimum share per ton of cane for both sugar and molasses; the mill deducts a processing charge [10][11]. An illustrative LSU AgCenter 2026 Louisiana budget assumes a 39.0% mill charge and a 16.7% crop-share land charge — leaving roughly 39% of proceeds to the mill, ~51% to the grower, and ~10% to the landlord [7]. (These are budget assumptions, not industry averages.) The upshot: a Louisiana farmer's check moves with the raw-sugar price even though the mill does the selling.
• The price — two worlds. The world price (ICE No. 11 raw sugar) sat near 15¢/lb in mid-2026 [13]. The U.S. domestic price is deliberately higher — bulk refined beet sugar was forward-priced around 40–42¢/lb and raw cane in the low 30s¢/lb in 2025–26 [14]. That gap is the sugar program (Section 7) at work, and it is the single biggest reason U.S. cane farming survives.
• Costs. Cane is input-heavy. Louisiana's total production cost jumped from ~$551 to ~$858 per acre between 2018 and 2023 — driven by a ~130% rise in fertilizer and ~82% rise in diesel — pushing the breakeven raw-sugar price from ~17¢ to ~28¢/lb [8]. In the Everglades, cash production cost runs ~$30–35 per ton of cane [9]. Because the output price is capped by policy, cost inflation eats margin directly.
• By-products. Mills burn bagasse (the crushed fiber) to power themselves and, in Florida, to generate electricity for sale — a genuine second revenue stream and a sustainability selling point [9]. Molasses adds a modest third stream.

Because the program stabilizes price, the swing factors for owner returns are yield (weather), input costs, mill reliability, and land — not the wild price cycles that define most commodities. Cash flow is seasonal, and planting/replanting costs are recovered over several harvests, so working capital and equipment finance are central to returns.

6. What drives demand

• A large, stable staple. ERS forecasts 2026/27 U.S. sugar use at ~12.57 million STRV, including ~12.44 million delivered for human consumption [15]. Buyers are food-and-beverage manufacturers, bakeries, confectioners, and packaged-food companies. It is a mature, slow-growth market.
• The domestic supply cap. Demand for U.S.-grown cane is set less by dinner tables than by policy: marketing allotments and import quotas decide how much of the market domestic growers get to serve (Section 7).
• Substitution. Cane sugar competes head-to-head with beet sugar, imported sugar, and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which displaced a lot of sugar in soft drinks decades ago. Low/no-calorie sweeteners cap volume at the top end.
• "Real sugar" trends cut both ways. Sugar-reduction health pressure limits growth, while a consumer swing back toward cane sugar over corn syrup (e.g., "made with real cane sugar" sodas) supports it.
• Coproducts. Molasses and bagasse-based power add secondary demand. Cane ethanol is not a major U.S. outlet — USDA's Feedstock Flexibility Program can divert surplus sugar to ethanol, but it is a policy release valve, not a core demand engine [10].
• Land competition. In Florida's EAA, cane competes with state and federal efforts to buy farmland for water storage and Everglades restoration — a drain on acreage.

7. Regulation

The U.S. Sugar Program is the defining feature of this industry. Unlike corn, it pays no cash subsidy; it props up the price through supply management [10][11]:

• Price-support loans. Growers/processors can pledge sugar to the USDA (via the Farm Service Agency, FSA, and Commodity Credit Corporation, CCC) for a nonrecourse loan, generally maturing within nine months — an effective price floor. Loans go to processors, not growers, because raw cane is bulky and perishable. For fiscal year 2026 the national raw-cane loan rate was 24.00¢/lb (regionally 22.96¢ in Florida, 25.11¢ in Louisiana); the refined-beet rate was set near 32.77¢/lb. Minimum grower payments were $34.62 per net ton in Florida and $39.29 per gross ton in Louisiana for processors taking CCC loans. The 2025 budget-reconciliation law (informally the "One Big Beautiful Bill") lifted the loan rate [11][14].
• Marketing allotments. An overall allotment quantity (OAQ), set at no less than 85% of estimated deliveries, caps how much sugar domestic processors can sell, split between cane and beet and allocated by production history [10].
• Tariff-rate quotas (TRQs). A set volume of imported sugar enters at a low tariff; above that, an out-of-quota tariff (~15¢/lb on raw sugar) makes further imports uneconomic — satisfying WTO (World Trade Organization) minimums while capping supply [10].
• The Mexico Suspension Agreements. Since 2014 (amended 2020), agreements limit Mexican sugar exports to the U.S. by volume and minimum price in lieu of anti-dumping duties; U.S. authorities voted to continue them in 2025 [12].

The combined effect: U.S. prices run well above world levels — good for growers, a cost to food manufacturers and consumers. Environmental regulation is the other heavy hand, especially in Florida: cane operates under the Everglades Forever Act's water-quality rules, phosphorus-reduction targets, and best-management practices (BMPs) in and around the Everglades Protection Area [27], plus state air rules governing sugarcane field burning. Labor is regulated through the H-2A temporary agricultural worker program, which lets qualifying employers hire seasonal foreign workers when domestic labor is short [28].

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

This is a consolidating, capital-intensive oligopoly at the growing/milling level. The mill is the strategic bottleneck: cane must reach a nearby processor within a day of cutting, so growers are economically tied to local mills, roads, rail, harvest contractors, and delivery contracts. Farm numbers have trended down for decades while average farm size has risen [3][4]. Mills have closed across the board — Hawaii's last in 2016, Texas's around 2024 — leaving roughly a dozen-plus raw-sugar mills concentrated in Louisiana (~11) and Florida (~4) [25][29].

Vertical integration is the moat. Florida's leaders grow cane, mill it, refine it (via jointly owned ASR Group), generate their own power, and market national brands — capturing margin at every step [17][18]. Louisiana's structure is more fragmented at the farm but pooled at grower-owned mills [20]. Barriers to entry are steep: cane needs specific subtropical land, a nearby mill, heavy specialized equipment, and — critically — access to the protected domestic market via historical marketing-allotment rights. That combination makes new independent entry nearly impossible and keeps ownership among a few long-tenured families, an ESOP, and cooperatives. The main competitive substitutes are beet sugar, HFCS, imports, and alternative uses of the land (in Louisiana, cane acreage flexes against rice and soybeans) [4].

9. Risks

• Policy risk (two-sided). The sugar program is the industry's foundation and its biggest uncertainty. Reform efforts to cut price supports recur in every farm-bill cycle; a weaker program would compress grower economics quickly [10].
• Trade risk. Changes to the Mexico agreements or TRQ levels can flood or tighten domestic supply [12].
• Weather and climate. Freezes (Louisiana), hurricanes and flooding (Florida), and drought are direct yield hits and can delay delivery. Texas's exit was tied partly to long-run water shortages [5][9].
• Crop and pest risk. Insects, nematodes, disease, and invasive species can cut stalk weight, sucrose recovery, or ratoon longevity [9].
• Mill concentration. A single mill outage, maintenance failure, labor shortage, or transport breakdown can hit many growers at once.
• Input-cost squeeze. Fertilizer and diesel spikes have already lifted breakevens sharply; with the output price policy-capped, cost inflation eats margin directly [8].
• Environmental and land pressure. Everglades restoration, phosphorus rules, burning limits, and state land purchases threaten Florida acreage and raise compliance costs [27].
• Labor. Seasonal availability, H-2A compliance, and wage changes affect harvest cost [28].
• Substitution and demand. HFCS competition and sugar-reduction trends cap volume growth [15].
• Concentration/liquidity (for investors). The near-total absence of listed U.S. pure-plays means direct exposure requires private, illiquid farmland or company stakes.

10. How to invest and the outlook

Public-market routes (all imperfect):

• Commodity price: the Teucrium Sugar ETF (CANE) or ICE No. 11 futures — a bet on the world price, which the U.S. program largely decouples from domestic grower economics [26].
• Operating companies: foreign cane-and-ethanol producers Adecoagro (AGRO) and Cosan (CSAN) give real cane exposure but with Brazilian currency, land, energy, and (for AGRO) controlling-shareholder considerations [22][23]. ADM and Bunge offer diversified, small-sugar exposure inside large agribusinesses [30].
• Land: Alico (ALCO) is a Florida land/lease proxy (land value, not operating cane margin) [24]; farmland REITs LAND and FPI own U.S. cropland broadly with little specific cane [30]; Alexander & Baldwin (ALEX) is a way to own former Hawaiian sugar land now redeployed to real estate [25].

Private routes (where the real industry is):

• Direct farmland ownership or lease in the EAA or Louisiana's cane parishes — the primary way to own the asset, valued on yield, water and drainage rights, and proximity to a viable mill.
• Private-equity/family-office stakes in mills or grower operations, plus equipment finance and private credit into the value chain. These rarely trade.

What to underwrite (private diligence): contracted access to a viable mill; historical tons and raw-sugar yield per acre; mill charges and grower-payment formulas; land tenure, drainage, and water rights; crop-cycle and replanting assumptions; fuel/fertilizer/labor/interest sensitivity; byproduct revenue; crop insurance and disaster resilience; environmental permits; and leverage through a weak-price or poor-crop year.

Indicators to watch: the durability of the sugar program's price floor after the 2025 loan-rate increase; the next farm-bill debate over supports; renewal terms of the Mexico Suspension Agreements; Florida land-and-water policy around Everglades restoration; and the fertilizer/diesel cost curve against a policy-capped output price — alongside harvested acres, tons per acre, sugar recovery, and mill utilization.

Forward-looking judgment: 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. The weakest thesis is broad sugar-demand growth alone: U.S. cane still competes with beet sugar, corn sweeteners, imports, policy shifts, weather, and alternative land uses. For most investors, the larger opportunity is the land underneath the cane rather than the cane itself.

---

Sources

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, 115112, 115113, 111998). 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 1,079→627; <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, Price Spreads from Farm to Consumer ($60.90/ton farmer price; ~32.1M tons cane; ~4.0M tons raw sugar; ~0.125 lb sugar/lb cane), 2025. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/price-spreads-from-farm-to-consumer/
7. LSU AgCenter, Projected Costs and Returns: Sugarcane Production in Louisiana, 2026 (39.0% mill charge; 16.7% crop-share land charge). https://www.lsuagcenter.com/
8. LSU AgCenter / Southern Ag Today, "Examining Sugarcane and Sugarbeet Production Costs," 2023 (LA cost $551→$858/acre; breakeven 17.2→28.2¢/lb). https://southernagtoday.org/2023/12/11/examining-sugarcane-and-sugarbeet-production-costs/
9. University of Florida IFAS, "An Overview of Florida Sugarcane" (EAA yields 30–40 tons/acre; ~$30–35/ton; mills grow ~2/3 of Florida cane; agronomy; pests; bagasse cogeneration). https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/
10. USDA Economic Research Service, "Sugar and Sweeteners — Policy" (marketing allotments, OAQ ≥85%, TRQs, out-of-quota tariffs, Feedstock Flexibility Program). https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/sugar-and-sweeteners/policy
11. USDA Farm Service Agency, "USDA Announces Fiscal Year 2026 Sugar Loan Rates," 2025 (24.00¢/lb national raw cane; FL 22.96¢; LA 25.11¢; grower minimum payments). https://www.fsa.usda.gov/news-events/news/09-26-2025/usda-announces-fiscal-year-2026-sugar-loan-rates-no-actions-feedstock
12. Federal Register, "Sugar From Mexico: Continuation of Suspension of the Antidumping Duty Investigation," 2025. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/09/19/2025-18222/sugar-from-mexico-continuation-of-suspension-of-the-antidumping-duty-investigation
13. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED), "Global price of Sugar, No. 11, World" (~15¢/lb, mid-2026). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSUGAISAUSDM
14. Southern Ag Today / USDA ERS Sugar and Sweeteners Outlook, "Sugar Market Outlook," 2025–2026 (U.S. refined beet ~40–42¢/lb; raw cane low-30s¢/lb; 2025 loan-rate increase). https://southernagtoday.org/2026/06/10/sugar-market-outlook/
15. USDA Economic Research Service, "Sugar and Sweeteners — Market Outlook" (2026/27 U.S. sugar use ~12.57M STRV; ~12.44M for human consumption). https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/sugar-and-sweeteners/market-outlook
16. U.S. Sugar, company site (Clewiston, FL; ~245,000 acres; ESOP; ~2,500 employees). https://www.ussugar.com/
17. Florida Crystals Corporation, company site (Fanjul family; 190,000+ acres; two mills). https://www.floridacrystalscorp.com/
18. ASR Group, "Our History" (world's largest cane-sugar refiner; jointly owned by Florida Crystals and the cooperative; Domino/C&H/Florida Crystals brands). https://asr-group.com/our-history
19. Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida (~39 members; ~70,000 acres; 400,000+ tons raw sugar; one mill). https://www.scgc.org/
20. Sugar Growers and Refiners of Louisiana (marketing cooperative; eight mills; ~2 billion lbs member sugar). https://sugarlouisiana.com/
21. M.A. Patout & Son, company overview (Louisiana plantation + three mills; ~4.6M tons annual cane capacity). https://mapatout.com/
22. Adecoagro S.A. (NYSE: AGRO), investor relations / SEC filings (Brazilian cane; ~228,640 ha plantations; ~90% company-grown; ~75% Tether-owned since 2025). https://ir.adecoagro.com/
23. Cosan S.A. (NYSE: CSAN) / Raízen, FY2025 results (Raízen ~70M tons crushed 2025/26 vs ~78M 2024/25). https://ri.cosan.com.br/
24. Alico, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALCO), SEC filings / investor relations (Florida land and lease to U.S. Sugar). https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&company=alico
25. 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/
26. Teucrium, "CANE — Teucrium Sugar Fund" (tracks ICE No. 11 world sugar futures; holds no physical sugar). https://teucrium.com/cane
27. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Everglades Forever Act (water quality, phosphorus reduction, BMPs). https://floridadep.gov/owper/eco-restoration/content/everglades-forever-act-efa
28. U.S. Department of Labor, H-2A Temporary Agricultural Program. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/programs/h-2a
29. 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/
30. The Motley Fool, "Sugar Stocks" (ADM, Bunge, Ingredion, farmland REIT sugar exposure). https://www.fool.com/investing/stock-market/market-sectors/consumer-staples/food-stocks/sugar-stocks/