THE FLORIDA
EVERGLADES
The Sugarcane Industry
From: FICUS
Network - USF University of South Florida
Sugar is the biggest industry in the
Everglades, producing more raw sugar than California or
Hawaii and employing almost 20,000 people. In the
Everglades Agricultural Area, sugar cane covers 400,000
of 700,000 acres and is the leading cause of phosphorus
pollution. (Even though vegetable growers use more
phosphorus in their fertilizers, they use less acreage.)
Eighty percent of Florida's sugar cane is grown in Palm
Beach County.
For the past 60 years, the sugar
industry has been supported by massive drainage and
flood-control projects paid for by the federal
government, by cheap water prices, by a federal program
that allows 10,000 Caribbean workers to enter the
country each year for harvest, by federal quotas on
sugar imports, and by federal subsidies that guarantee a
minimum selling price for sugar. While price supports
exist for many other U.S. crops, the benefits do not
match those of sugar. Federal benefits are valued, for
example, at between $50 million and $100 million a year
for each of the largest sugarcane growers.
By dominating various state and
regional boards, the sugar industry together with other
agricultural interests has maintained state policies
favoring low water prices and high rates of water use.
In the past decade, the industry has also contributed
almost $3 million to congressional races (compared with
$1 million or so for General Motors Corporation), giving
its lobbyists influence in Washington.
Sugarcane growers (and other farmers)
argue that environmentalists will destroy their way of
life. Environmentalists counter that neither the current
use of water nor the use of the Everglades to dispose of
agricultural drainage water are sustainable practices,
and that unless the region's problems are addressed,
soils will vanish, the remnant Everglades will disappear
from the effects of pollution, and ultimately little
will be left to support either humans or wildlife. (See
Chapter 15 on Florida's Agriculture for more information
on agricultural issues.)
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For information on the
Everglades and the Florida panther, contact the
following agencies (see the listing of governmental
agencies in the back of the guide):
