Sugar Manufacturing in the United States (NAICS 31131)

An investor's rollup primer. NAICS = North American Industry Classification System, the U.S. government's standard code for industries. This level bundles the two ways the country makes sugar — from beets and from cane — into one industry.

1. Overview

U.S. sugar manufacturing turns two very different raw crops into the same finished product: the refined white sucrose sold in grocery bags and bought by the truckload by food and beverage makers. The country makes that sugar two ways, and NAICS splits them into two child industries: beet sugar (311313), refined from the sugar beet grown in the Upper Midwest, Great Plains, and West; and cane sugar (311314), milled and refined from sugarcane grown in Florida and Louisiana [1][2]. Federal statistics group the pair one level up as NAICS 31131 — Sugar Manufacturing.

For an investor, three facts define the whole level and repeat in both halves:

• It is a protected, policy-set industry. Domestic sugar sells well above the world price because of the federal sugar program — price-support loans, marketing allotments, and import quotas written into each Farm Bill. GAO estimated annual consumer costs of $2.5–$3.5 billion and producer benefits of $1.4–$2.7 billion, with U.S. users paying about twice the world price in 2022 [3][4]. Profit here is driven more by Washington than by weather or management.
• It is almost entirely private. There is no U.S.-listed pure-play sugar company on either side. The producers are grower cooperatives, employee-owned corporations, and family firms. Public-market investors reach the theme only sideways (Section 10).
• It is concentrated and consolidating. Just 46 firms make up the entire national industry, plants are closing at the margins, and the survivors are the largest, lowest-cost operators [5][6].

The real value of looking at 31131 as one level is the contrast between its two halves. Beet and cane make a nearly identical product and compete for the same customers, yet they differ in size, geography, ownership, and concentration — and they are moving in slightly different directions. Section 2 lays that contrast out.

2. What's inside — the two child industries and how they differ

The level has exactly two children, and they are near-perfect substitutes at the customer's door: for most industrial uses, refined beet and cane sugar are chemically identical and interchangeable [1][2]. Yet the businesses behind them look quite different.

(CR4 = the combined revenue share of the four largest firms; HHI = Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, a concentration score where above 1,500 reads as "concentrated." Both explained in Section 3.)

The paradox worth noticing: beet makes more sugar (~56% of U.S. tons) but books less manufacturing revenue (~40% of the level), while cane makes less sugar but records more revenue [1][2]. The reason is structural. Beet goes from root to finished refined sugar in a single integrated pass. Cane is counted in two value-added stages — field mills sell raw sugar, then refineries buy and purify it — and cane refiners (Domino, C&H) also melt and resell imported raw sugar, so the cane code captures throughput that never grew in a U.S. field. More counted stages plus imported raw sugar lift cane's shipments above its share of domestic sugar.

A second contrast — firm size. Cane has almost three times as many firms as beet (34 vs. 12), yet beet's firms are individually larger by revenue: roughly $360 million of receipts per beet firm versus about $195 million per cane firm. Beet is a dozen big multi-plant co-ops; cane is a wider mix of a few integrated giants, many family mills, and a handful of large refiners. That is why beet reads as the more concentrated half even though it is the smaller one.

A geographic shift on the cane side: Louisiana has now overtaken Florida in cane-sugar output for the fifth consecutive year — USDA forecasts 2.17 million short tons (raw value) from Louisiana versus 2.02 million from Florida in FY2026/27 [2].

3. How big it is

Federal statistics for NAICS 31131, drawn from our ground-truth figures for this level, size the manufacturing side of the whole industry:

Concentration. For this combined level: the four largest firms make 44.1% of revenue (CR4), the top eight 66.3% (CR8), the top twenty 93.5% (CR20), and — because there are only 46 firms in total — the top fifty account for 100% (CR50). The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index is 759.7, which on its own reads as "unconcentrated" [5].

That HHI needs a caveat, and it is an analytically important one. The merged level looks far less concentrated than either child. Beet's own HHI is ~2,075 and cane's is 1,189.5, yet the pooled figure is only 759.7. That is a statistical artifact of adding two separate producer pools together — no single firm is huge relative to the combined total. But beet and cane sugar are near-perfect substitutes, so the real competitive arena is the merged one, and even there the handful of leaders (U.S. Sugar, ASR Group, American Crystal, Amalgamated) are large. Read the low 759.7 as "no one firm towers over the national sugar market," not as "this is a fragmented, competitive industry" — it is neither fragmented nor especially competitive.

Undercount / scope caveat. These figures are not undercounted in the usual small-operator way. This level is 46 large, well-surveyed firms, not a scatter of tiny businesses that slip through federal counts. The distortion runs the other direction, and for a specific reason: the manufacturing codes exclude the farming side — sugar beet farming (NAICS 111991) and sugarcane farming (NAICS 111930) sit in separate codes — even though most of these companies grow their own crop. Because cane firms are heavily vertically integrated (they also own farmland, mills, refineries, power plants, railroads, and, in Florida, real estate), the ~$10.96 billion understates the enterprises' true scale. U.S. Sugar alone reports roughly $1.3 billion in revenue and farms ~230,000 acres — far more than its mill-and-refinery slice [7]. And the beet industry's own tally of "more than 100,000 jobs and over $13 billion in economic activity" is a whole-supply-chain figure spanning ~10,000 farm families, not a factory headcount [8]. Treat $10.96 billion as the industry's manufacturing value, and the ~14,778 employees as factory jobs only — both real, both narrower than the companies behind them.

4. The investable universe — where the value sits

There is no listed U.S. pure-play on either side, so the "universe" is mostly a map of private owners. Value concentrates in a short list of large operators, split by which crop and which structure.

On the cane side (the larger-revenue half), the leaders are big and vertically integrated:

(ESOP = employee stock ownership plan, a trust that holds the company for its workers.)

On the beet side (more sugar, fewer/larger firms), the leaders are grower cooperatives — the farmers who raise the beets own the factories and split the profits:

Where does value concentrate? On the cane side, in equity value — U.S. Sugar and Florida Crystals are enterprises whose Florida farmland and power generation can rival the sugar operation itself, and whose worth compounds outside anyone's brokerage account. On the beet side, in cooperative payout streams — beet co-ops run near break-even by design, returning "profit" to grower-members as per-ton beet payments and dividends on cooperative stock, so the value shows up in members' pockets, not on an exchange. Either way, the largest, lowest-cost operators in the best regions (Florida, Louisiana, the Red River Valley, Idaho) hold the durable advantage.

5. How the money works

Both halves run the same three-part economic engine; the mix differs by crop.

• The processing margin. Every plant is paid on how much sugar it recovers — beet tonnage or cane tonnage times sucrose content times the recovery the factory achieves. Because neither beets nor cane store well, plants run a compressed "campaign" (beets from fall harvest through spring; cane roughly October–April), pushing capacity utilization toward the maximum while the crop lasts. The fixed cost of a several-hundred-million-dollar plant is spread over just a few months, so throughput during the season is everything, and energy — natural gas to boil off water and crystallize sugar — is the largest variable cost [18].
• The refining spread (cane-specific). Cane's second stage adds a distinct profit line: refined price − raw-sugar cost − energy. Standalone refiners buy raw sugar (domestic or imported under quota), purify it, and sell white sugar — the raw-to-refined spread is their margin [11]. Beet has no separate refining stage; it is integrated end to end.
• Co-products and power. Nothing is wasted. Both sides sell molasses and pulp/fiber for animal feed; beet processors recover specialty products like betaine from molasses; the largest Florida cane operations burn bagasse (cane fiber) to generate electricity sold to the grid — a genuine second revenue stream [12][19].
• Land (cane-specific). Because Florida and Louisiana operators own vast acreage, farmland value is a large share of enterprise worth — and Everglades-restoration purchases have periodically let the state pay a premium for cane land [7].

What sits under all of it is the domestic sugar price, which the federal program holds well above the swinging world price. So unlike Brazilian or Thai producers who live and die by world futures, U.S. sugar owners operate on a more predictable, policy-set floor — and compete mainly on volume and cost (yield, recovery, throughput, energy). The one exception: the floor itself can be moved by Washington.

The cooperative twist matters for how returns reach owners. In a grower co-op — most of beet, much of cane in Louisiana — "profit" flows back as beet or cane payments per ton, so the co-op is run near break-even and the upside lands with member-farmers. That is why a good year raises beet-stock values, and a bad one compresses payments. The current pressure point: American Crystal's 2024 crop generated a $78.00-per-ton net beet payment, but its record-volume 2025 crop was forecast to return only $43.85 per ton — a 44% decline amid weaker pricing and import pressure [20]. That payment swing is a better indication of beet-side economic volatility than processor "margins" stripped of grower returns.

6. What drives demand

• Overall sweetener volume is flat to slowly declining. U.S. per-capita caloric-sweetener availability has fallen from 153.6 pounds in 1999 to 123.5 pounds in 2023, on health awareness and, more recently, appetite-suppressing GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) weight-loss drugs [21]. Population growth roughly offsets the per-capita slide, keeping total refined-sugar volume unusually stable year to year. USDA's May 2026 analysis cited changing eating habits, revised food-consumption recommendations, inflation, and GLP-1 adoption when projecting total food-and-beverage sugar use down 0.7% year over year [22].
• Sugar vs. high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Sugar's main rival is HFCS, a liquid corn-based sweetener. HFCS availability has dropped nearly 45% since 1999 as manufacturers reformulate toward "real" cane and beet sugar, while refined cane-and-beet sugar availability actually recovered to 68.4 pounds per person in 2023 [21]. The 2025 push under the "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) movement — dramatized by Coca-Cola launching a U.S. cane-sugar Coke — nudges branded demand back toward sugar, though nutritionists note cane sugar and HFCS are metabolically near-identical [23]. This is a modest tailwind for the level, though so far it has favored cane over beet, since reformulation marketing prizes "cane sugar" labeling.
• Beet-vs-cane split within the level. The two children compete for the same buyers. Because a slice of buyers (and "cane sugar" marketing claims) prefers cane, the reformulation trend routes incremental demand toward cane, capping beet's reach at the premium end [1].
• Industrial and trade cycles. Baking, confectionery, dairy, and soft-drink production set industrial demand; whatever domestic mills don't supply is filled by quota-limited imports, so trade policy shapes how much demand accrues to U.S. producers rather than foreign ones.

7. Regulation

Regulation is not a side issue at this level — it is the business model, and it is essentially identical for both children.

The U.S. Sugar Program (Farm Bill), run by the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) through its Farm Service Agency (FSA), has three interlocking tools [3][4]:

• Nonrecourse price-support loans — processors borrow against their sugar at set loan rates and can forfeit the sugar instead of repaying if prices fall below, making the loan rate a de facto price floor. For FY2026, rates were increased: the national average raw-cane loan rate rose to 24.00¢/lb (with regional rates of 22.96¢ in Florida and 25.11¢ in Louisiana), and the national average refined-beet loan rate rose to 32.77¢/lb (regional range 32.56–33.66¢) [24].
• Marketing allotments — USDA caps how much each processor may sell for domestic food use, sets the overall quantity at no less than 85% of expected consumption, then splits it 54.35% beet / 45.65% cane — a formal division of the market between the two children [4].
• A "no-net-cost" mandate and Feedstock Flexibility Program that can divert surplus sugar to ethanol to keep the program from costing taxpayers. Note that "no-cost" refers to federal budget outlays, not economic cost: GAO found estimated annual consumer costs of $2.5–$3.5 billion and approximately $1 billion of annual net economic cost [3].

Trade and import quotas. Imports are held down by tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) — a low-tariff quota volume with steep tariffs above it (the FY2025 in-quota raw-cane TRQ was ~1.12 million metric tons, the WTO (World Trade Organization) minimum) [25]. Standard out-of-quota tariffs are 15.36¢/lb for raw sugar and 16.21¢/lb for refined sugar [4]. Separately, U.S.–Mexico sugar trade runs under antidumping/countervailing-duty (AD/CVD) suspension agreements, first signed 2014, amended 2017, and continued again in 2025 after the ITC voted to keep them [26].

Environmental, biotech, and labor. Florida cane draws sustained scrutiny over Everglades water quality and pre-harvest field burning (both in litigation). Beet faces its own biotech question: ~98% of U.S. sugar beets are genetically modified (herbicide-tolerant, with dicamba-tolerant traits advancing), drawing herbicide-drift concerns [27]. Water rights in the arid West, air permits on gas-fired boilers, and seasonal H-2A guest-worker labor apply across the level. BLS reported a 2024 total-recordable injury and illness rate of 6.8 cases per 100 full-time-equivalent workers in beet sugar manufacturing versus 4.9 for sugar manufacturing overall [28].

8. Consolidation

Both halves are concentrated and getting more so, and the map is physically shrinking on both sides.

• Cane: U.S. Sugar bought Imperial Sugar in 2022 for ~$315 million, over a Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust challenge that the government lost on appeal in 2023 [9]. Texas's last mill closed in 2024 amid a water dispute with Mexico; Hawaii's last plantation closed in 2016 — cane is now confined to Florida and Louisiana, with 15 mills total (11 Louisiana, 4 Florida) [13][29].
• Beet: roughly 14% of U.S. beet factories closed over a decade, and 2025 brought the symbolic end of California beet farming when the last plant (Spreckels, Brawley) shut after nearly 80 years, despite ~$100 million of investment, citing deteriorating industry economics [30]. USITC counted 23 beet plant closures since 1981 [31].

Barriers to entry are formidable on both sides: a mill or factory holds hundreds of millions of dollars of hard-to-repurpose equipment, the allotment system rewards incumbents with production history, and the crops grow commercially in only a handful of states. The direction of travel across the whole level is the same — fewer, larger plants in the lowest-cost regions. At the merged level the low HHI (759.7) can make this look benign, but that reading is the aggregation artifact flagged in Section 3; on the ground, each half is consolidating into a shorter list of survivors.

9. Risks

Both children share nearly the same risk stack, which is what makes them one investment theme:

• Policy risk — the dominant one. The entire profit model rests on the federal sugar program. Any Farm Bill change to loan rates, allotments, or import quotas — or trade liberalization — would compress margins across both halves at once. Sweetener-using food manufacturers lobby hard against the program every cycle [4].
• Trade risk. Changes to the Mexico suspension agreements, WTO pressure, or the USMCA (U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement) joint review due in 2026 could raise import competition [26].
• Price/cost squeeze (cyclical). As 2024–2025 showed, falling sugar prices against record input costs can wipe out margins and force closures on both sides. American Crystal's 44% decline in per-ton beet payment illustrates the severity [20][32].
• Demand erosion. Long-run per-capita sugar consumption is soft; sugar-sweetened-beverage taxes and GLP-1 drugs add drag; a durable shift to non-caloric sweeteners would shrink the market [21][22].
• Weather and biology. Cane faces hurricanes, floods, freezes, and Everglades subsidence; beet faces drought, early freezes, disease, and Western water cuts. Both are crop-exposed.
• Concentration / stranded assets. With only 46 firms and closures underway, a shutting plant strands both the factory and its surrounding growers (the Brawley and Texas playbooks). A prolonged outage during the campaign cannot always be recovered because perishable crops cannot economically travel long distances to another plant [30][29].
• Operational safety. Fine sugar dust is explosive; the 2008 Imperial refinery disaster killed 14 workers and injured 38, underscoring the hazard profile on the cane side [33].

10. How to invest and the outlook

Public-market routes (all indirect). No U.S. sugar producer — beet or cane — is listed, so equity investors approximate the theme sideways:

• The nearest listed refiner — Sucro Limited (TSXV: SUGR; OTCQB: SUGRF), which owns North American refining assets but mixes refining with commodity trading and logistics; results reflect spread and working-capital volatility rather than pure domestic refining [34].
• Foreign/global sugar producers — Cosan (NYSE: CSAN, Brazil), Adecoagro (NYSE: AGRO, South America), Rogers Sugar (TSX: RSI, Canada), Südzucker (XETRA: SZU, Europe's largest beet group and the closest listed proxy for the beet side), Associated British Foods (LON: ABF). All track world sugar and their home markets, not the protected U.S. price.
• The competing sweetener — Archer-Daniels-Midland (NYSE: ADM) and Ingredion (NYSE: INGR) on the corn-syrup (HFCS) side; note they are partly competitors to sugar, so this is inverse exposure.
• Sugar buyers — packaged-food and confectionery names (e.g., Hershey, Mondelez) benefit when domestic sugar is cheap, giving exposure that runs opposite to producer margins.
• Commodity futures — ICE Sugar No. 16 provides direct exposure to the protected U.S. raw-cane market with physical delivery of U.S.-grown or duty-paid raw sugar [35]. ICE Sugar No. 11 (world raw) tracks global prices. The Teucrium Sugar ETF (NYSE Arca: CANE) holds No. 11 world sugar futures, not No. 16 — it does not track U.S. domestic prices, refining spreads, or quota rents, and can diverge sharply from domestic sugar economics [36]. (ETF = exchange-traded fund, a basket bought like a stock; ICE = Intercontinental Exchange.)
• Land proxies — Florida land holders (e.g., Alico, NASDAQ: ALCO) sit next to the cane belt.

Private routes (the only direct ones). Direct ownership is effectively closed to outside capital. On the cane side, U.S. Sugar is employee-owned and ASR/Florida Crystals is family-and-cooperative owned; realistic access is at the periphery — farmland funds or agricultural private equity holding cane acreage. On the beet side, the one true ownership stake is cooperative "beet stock" (American Crystal shares recently traded ~$5,500–$6,000), but it is practically limited to those farming qualifying acreage [37][38].

Outlook (forward-looking). The near-term picture is cautious across both halves: record 2024/25–2025/26 supply and soft demand have pressed U.S. sugar prices to multi-year lows just as growing costs hit records, squeezing cooperative payouts and closing marginal plants [1][20][32][30]. USDA forecasts beet-sugar production at 4.821 million STRV in FY2026/27, the lowest since FY2019/20, with planted acreage at a 45-year low; cane-sugar production is forecast at 4.18 million tons [2]. Consolidation into the lowest-cost regions is likely to continue on both sides. The clearest potential upside is the "real sugar" demand shift under the MAHA/anti-HFCS push — a modest tailwind that has so far favored cane over beet [23]. But the genuine swing factors are political, not agronomic: the next Farm Bill's treatment of the sugar program and the 2026 USMCA review of Mexican sugar access will matter more to this $10.96 billion industry than any single harvest. For as long as the federal program holds domestic prices above world levels, sugar manufacturing stays what it is today — a protected, concentrated, largely private industry, profitable in normal years, painful at the bottom of the price cycle, and closed to public equity on both the beet and the cane side.

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Sources

1. USDA Economic Research Service, "Sugar and Sweeteners Outlook" (Sept/Dec 2025) — beet ~56% / cane ~44% of U.S. production; near-perfect substitutability; prices. https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/outlooks/113592/SSS-M-448.pdf
2. USDA Economic Research Service, "Sugar and Sweeteners Outlook" (July 2026) — beet production forecasts, cane forecasts, Louisiana overtaking Florida, deliveries. https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/29364/sss-m-455.pdf
3. U.S. Government Accountability Office, "Sugar Program: Alternative Methods Could Produce More Accurate Assessments of Economic Effects" (GAO-24-106144, 2024) — consumer/producer costs, world price comparison. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106144
4. Congressional Research Service, "Fundamental Elements of the U.S. Sugar Program" / "Farm Bill Primer: Sugar Program" — program mechanics, allotment split, no-net-cost design, sweetener-user politics. https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/IF10223.html
5. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Concentration for NAICS 31131 and children (level receipts ~$10.96B; 46 firms; CR4 44.1%, CR8 66.3%, CR20 93.5%, CR50 100%; HHI 759.7; child CR/HHI figures). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
6. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023 — NAICS 31131 and children (employment 14,778; establishments 83; annual payroll ~$1.10B; Q1 payroll ~$254.4M). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
7. Wikipedia, "U.S. Sugar" — company scale, ~230,000 acres, ~$1.3B revenue, Imperial Sugar acquisition (2025). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Sugar
8. American Sugarbeet Growers Association / American Sugar Alliance — ~10,000 growers, cooperative structure, supply-chain jobs and economic-impact estimates (2024). https://americansugarbeet.org/
9. Food Navigator USA / WUSF, "Court thwarts DOJ attempt to block US Sugar–Imperial Sugar deal" (2022–2023) — ~$315M acquisition, antitrust ruling. https://www.wusf.org/courts-law/2023-07-14/appeals-court-rejects-antitrust-arguments-us-sugar
10. U.S. International Trade Commission, "Sugar Industry Structure Part 3: U.S. Cane Refining Capacity" (November 2024) — ASR 47.2%, U.S. Sugar 22.4%, LSR 12.6% of refining capacity. https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/executive_briefings/ebot_gehrke_sugar_industry_structure_part_3.pdf
11. ASR Group, "About Us / Our Companies"; American Sugar Refining — world's largest cane refiner, Domino/C&H/Florida Crystals brands, refinery footprint (2024). https://asr-group.com/about-us
12. Brazil Sugar Supplier, "Top Sugar Companies in the USA" (2024) — private-company revenue estimates (Florida Crystals ~$1.6B). https://www.brazilsugarsupplier.com/post/top-sugar-companies-in-the-usa-leaders-driving-the-sweet-industry
13. Cropfarming.org / American Sugar Cane League, "Sugarcane Mills in the United States" — 15 mills (11 LA, 4 FL). https://cropfarming.org/sugarcane-mills-in-the-united-states/
14. American Crystal Sugar Company, "About Our Cooperative" — grower-owned structure, Red River Valley (2024). https://www.crystalsugar.com/about-our-cooperative/
15. USDA, FY2026 Sugar Marketing Allocations — processor-level allocations (American Crystal 2.062M, Amalgamated 1.253M, etc.); total beet allotment 5.525M STRV. https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-02723.pdf
16. U.S. Beet Sugar Association — seven manufacturers, 19 factories, 10 states, cooperative ownership, union labor. https://beetsugar.org/about/
17. Food Business News / United Sugars Corporation — marketing cooperative, "Crystal"/"Pillsbury Best" brands, ~one-quarter of U.S. sugar demand (2024). https://unitedsugarpr.com/who-we-are/our-members/
18. USDA Farm Service Agency, "USDA Announces FY2025 Sugar Loan Rates, Allotment and Marketing Allocations" — campaign/energy economics. https://www.fsa.usda.gov/news-events/news/09-24-2024/usda-announces-fiscal-year-2025-sugar-loan-rates
19. ScienceDirect / ACS Omega, "Sugar Beet Pulp" and "Reactive Extraction of Betaine" — co-products (pulp, molasses, betaine) (2023). https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/sugar-beet-pulp
20. American Crystal Sugar Company, "News: Shareholders Harvest a Record-Breaking Crop, Face Market Challenges" (Dec 2025) — $78/ton 2024 payment, $43.85/ton 2025 forecast. https://www.crystalsugar.com/about-our-cooperative/news-media/news/american-crystal-sugar-company-shareholders-harvest-a-record-breaking-crop-face-market-challenges/
21. USDA Economic Research Service, "Caloric sweetener availability" — consumption 153.6 lbs (1999) to 123.5 lbs (2023); refined sugar 68.4 lbs (2023); HFCS decline. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/110515
22. USDA Economic Research Service, "Sugar and Sweeteners Outlook" (May 2026) — demand uncertainty, GLP-1 drugs, eating habits, −0.7% year-over-year projection. https://ers.usda.gov/media/20880/sss-m-453.pdf
23. NPR / PBS NewsHour, "Coca-Cola says it will use U.S. cane sugar in a new Coke" and MAHA/HFCS context (2025). https://www.npr.org/2025/07/22/nx-s1-5476161/coca-cola-cane-sugar-coke-trump-recipe
24. USDA Farm Service Agency, "USDA Announces FY2026 Sugar Loan Rates" — national average raw cane 24.00¢/lb, refined beet 32.77¢/lb, regional rates (Sept 2025). https://www.fsa.usda.gov/news-events/news/09-26-2025/usda-announces-fiscal-year-2026-sugar-loan-rates-no-actions-feedstock
25. Federal Register, "FY2025 Tariff-Rate Quota Allocations for Raw Cane Sugar" (2024) — ~1.12M metric tons in-quota, WTO minimum. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/07/26/2024-16487/fiscal-year-2025-tariff-rate-quota-allocations-for-raw-cane-sugar-refined-and-specialty-sugar-and
26. Federal Register / American Sugar Alliance, "Sugar From Mexico: Continuation of Suspension of the Antidumping Duty Investigation" (Sept 19, 2025); USMCA 2026 review context. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/09/19/2025-18222/sugar-from-mexico-continuation-of-suspension-of-the-antidumping-duty-investigation
27. USDA Economic Research Service, "Adoption of Genetically Engineered Crops" — ~98% herbicide-tolerant sugar beet adoption by 2013. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/83714
28. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024 Injuries, Illnesses, and Fatalities — beet sugar manufacturing 6.8 TRC per 100 FTE vs 4.9 for sugar manufacturing overall. https://www.bls.gov/web/osh/table-1-industry-rates-national.htm
29. Texas Monthly / Border Report, "Texas's Last Sugar Mill Just Closed" (2024) — final Texas cane mill closure and water-treaty dispute. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/sugar-mill-texas-drought/
30. Civil Eats, "After 150 Years, California's Sugar Beet Industry Comes to an End" (Dec 2025) — Brawley closure, ~$100M investment, ~14% of beet factories closed in a decade. https://civileats.com/2025/12/08/after-150-years-californias-sugar-beet-industry-comes-to-an-end/
31. U.S. International Trade Commission, "Sugar Industry Structure" executive briefing — 23 beet plant closures since 1981. https://www.usitc.gov/sites/default/files/publications/332/executive_briefings/ebot_gehrke_sugar_industry_structure_part_2.pdf
32. Terrain / American AgCredit, "Big Supplies, Slowing Demand Roil Sugar Prices, Margins"; Southern Ag Today — 2024–2025 price decline and record per-acre costs. https://www.terrainag.com/insights/big-supplies-slowing-demand-roil-sugar-prices-margins/
33. U.S. Chemical Safety Board, "Imperial Sugar Company Dust Explosion and Fire" (2008) — 14 killed, 38 injured. https://www.csb.gov/imperial-sugar-company-dust-explosion-and-fire/
34. Sucro Limited, "Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2025 Results" (2026) — nearest listed refiner with North American assets. https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/sucro-announces-fourth-quarter-and-year-end-2025-results-898881470.html
35. ICE, "Sugar No. 16 Contract Specifications" — U.S. domestic raw-cane futures. https://www.ice.com/products/914/specs
36. Teucrium Sugar Fund, SEC Form 10-K (2025) — holds No. 11 world sugar futures, not No. 16 domestic. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1471824/000143774926006385/weat20251231_10k.htm
37. Agweek / Red River Farm Network, "American Crystal Sugar beet stock sets record high price" — beet-stock trading ~$5,500–$6,000 (2024–2026). https://www.agweek.com/news/sugarbeet/american-crystal-sugar-stock-shares-hit-record-high-price
38. Western Sugar Cooperative, "Our Growers" — closed cooperative, one preferred share per acre, share transfer mechanics. https://www.westernsugar.com/who-we-are/our-growers/