Lynne Kiesling
In the comments to my earlier post about sugar industry rent seeking, Dan asks who are the top recipients of these sugar subsidies.
I did a search on Hoover’s for U.S. companies listing SIC 2061 (cane sugar growing) and 2062 (cane sugar refining and processing) as their primary SIC codes. I excluded beet sugar just to make my estimate of the extent of the subsidy problem more conservative.
This search yielded 112 companies. I ranked them by annual sales revenue. Here are the top 10:
- Contran Corporation
- Imperial Sugar
- American Sugar Holdings
- Florida Crystals
- C&H Sugar
- U.S. Sugar Corporation
- M. A. Patout & Son
- Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers
- Okeelanta Corporation
- Cora Texas Manufacturing Company
Note that this list does not indicate any particular benefits that any individual company would enjoy if this sugar subsidy in the farm bill passes; nor does this list indicate political contributions or other forms of rent-seeking activity that these firms or their trade associations have undertaken. But if you want to look for parties who will benefit from this legislation, here’s a place to start.