A burning sugar cane field (Photo: Flickr/skatoolaki)

The high costs of American sugar, coupled with quotas that make it near-impossible for the product to be imported, have led two congressmen to file a bill that would overhaul the way the industry does business. One of the bill’s sponsors, Danny Davis, D-Ill., tells the Independent that filing the “Free Market Sugar Act” was a no-brainer, considering the impact that sugar prices have had on his constituents.

“Chicago used to be known as the candy capital of the world,” says Davis. But sugar-using industries are having a hard time doing business in a dismal economy, especially when the cost of one their main ingredients — sugar — is two to three times higher than the global price.

Davis and Pitts’ law would rework the Farm Bill, and help determine the level of subsidies that agricultural growers and products could receive.

“The Farm Bill is pretty much the regulator, if you will,” Davis says. “That’s where the basic decisions get made.” The problem, according to many sugar-using industries, is that the bill hasn’t been regulating the industry enough.

“Many outfits have not only moved out of areas like Chicago and other industrial areas, but have moved to lower-cost producing areas and even out of the country,” says Davis. “So obviously that causes the continuous outflow of jobs and work opportunities.” Davis cites shutdowns of candy companies and bakeries in his district as evidence that the sugar industry needs to change.

Pitts and Davis have also recently announced the formation of the Congressional Sugar Reform Caucus, a bipartisan group that also includes Sens. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Jean Shaheen, D-N.H. ”The caucus is made up of individuals whose areas and congressional districts are hurt as a result of the high cost,” says Davis. “It’s not only candy — it’s any of the industries in the sugar-using environment.”

Kirk and Shaheen also recently introduced a bill, the “Stop Unfair Giveaways And Restrictions” (SUGAR) Act, which aims to end price supports for sugar.

Though support for the U.S. sugar industry runs high among legislators, partly due to the fact that Big Sugar continuously lines the campaign coffers of both Republicans and Democrats, there is a a tangible discontent among industries that use sugar products, who find domestic prices to be too high and, because of quotas, can only import so much.

Enter Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Penn., and Danny Davis, D-Ill., who teamed up to introduce a bill that would protect the other sweet-tooth industries: candy companies that lie within their districts.

“We’ve heard from his constituents that the price of sugar is affecting business, it’s affecting jobs,” says Pitts spokesperson Andrew Wimer, who adds that Davis, the Chicago Democrat cosponsoring the legislation, cites examples of factories that have shut their doors because of the high price of sugar.

The Free Market Sugar Act would repeal the sugar loan program and amend the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act (known as the Farm Bill), perhaps the most important piece of legislation impacting U.S. sugar interests. Written every five years, the Farm Bill helps sugar growers with farm subsidies (which some dismiss as “corporate welfare”) and a series of quotas that tightly control the supply of imported sugar, a benefit to the handful of American sugar producers who pocket around $1 billion in excess profits a year, and a detriment to candy companies that buy U.S. sugar at prices two to three times higher than the global market rate.

Federal legislation also calls for the sugar program to be operated on a no-cost basis, a provision some sugar insiders project will remain for years to come.

“In general, [the Free Market Sugar Act] seeks to reform the sugar program so that the government is not controlling how much sugar is produced and imported,” says Wimer. ”It loosens the controls on production and importation, so that the U.S. price for sugar can be more closely aligned with the world price.”

In addition to amending the sugar price support program, the bill pushes for more transparency in the sugar industry, and an overhaul of how it does business. If enacted, the bill would replace quota import provisions with a tariff rate quota. “Right now the USDA is tightly controlling how much raw cane sugar comes into the U.S.,” says Wimer. “Instead of blanket eliminating quotas, we are modifying it so it’s not as unfair to the current market.”

Pitts and Davis have also recently announced the formation of the Congressional Sugar Reform Caucus, a bipartisan group that also includes Sens. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Jean Shaheen, D-N.H.

Representatives from Florida Crystals did not respond to inquiries about the new legislation.

The intention is to come up with a concrete plan to make real the recent proposal from agricultural leaders, including Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, to voluntarily cut $23 billion from agriculture. That willingness to cut was spurred by a fear that the congressional “super committee,” which is tasked with chopping $1.2 trillion from the federal budget in the next decade, would otherwise cut even deeper into agriculture.

The bill will likely include cuts to direct commodity payments, conservation and nutrition plans. Lobbyists for agribusiness like the National Corn Growers Association and the American Soybean Association are pushing for Congress to cease direct payments in favor of improved crop insurance, which the Associated Press reports is pitting farmers in the south, who grow crops like cotton that benefit from direct payments, against those in other parts of the country.

One lobbyist described the relationship between lobbyists and congressional aides as “free-flowing and open,” Gannett reports.

The bill, if taken up by the “super committee,” will be forced into an up-down vote, with no amendments to the legislation being possible. That’s drawing alarm from groups critical of farm subsidies, Gannett reports.

“Given the amount of money involved, and given the implications of the farm bill for our food and the quality of our environment, there’s a lot of folks in Congress that ought to have a voice in where this ends up other than the agriculture committees,” said Craig Cox, senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told the Associated Press Monday that the administration wanted the farm bill to increase disaster aid, following a difficult season for farmers.

The congressional leaders plan to release details of the bill by Nov. 1.

Chamlee talks about her piece, which zeroes in on Big Sugar, and about the larger series the story is a part of, which you can find out more about at CampaignCash.org.

Though Obama didn’t vote for it because he was on the campaign trail — and he maintained that the bill was “far from perfect” — he issued a statement expressing his support and accusing opponents of “saying no to America’s farmers and ranchers.”

Under the bill, individuals earning up to $750,000 in farm income and $500,000 in non-farm income are eligible for federal “help.” That means that a farming couple could make as much as $2.5 million in a year and still receive taxpayer subsidies.

One distinction to be made: Obama’s criticism of the program — as reported by the Government Accountability Office this week — stems from abuses under the bill, not the bill itself. That is, the GAO found that folks earning higher than the income threshold were still receiving payments. It’s an easy thing to criticize. The question is, how far would a President Obama go to change that income threshold altogether?