Europe will soon allow its states to grow more sugar beet, which will devastate economies in the Caribbean, and a trade that underpinned the British empire Saturday 21 February 2015 22.00 GMT Last modified on Sunday 22 February 2015 00.08 GMT There is a photocopied sign above the desk in the one-room office of the North St Elizabeth Cane Farmers’ Association that reads: “Plan ahead: it wasn’t raining when they built the ark!” From the end of next year a change in EU policy will likely force cane farmers across the Caribbeana and beyond out of traditional work and into subsistence poverty. The change is the end to the existing cap on European sugar beet production, which will flood a sugar market already, in anticipation, experiencing historic low prices. The removal of the cap is part of a drive among finance ministers to curtail long-term arrangements assisting former European colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP countries). Under fierce lobbying pressure from multinational sugar processors – Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Mars – the EU argues that the reform is made in the spirit of freer markets and better value for the European shopper. (The market will remain, more free for some than others, however. Beet sugar grown intensively on rotation on European farms will, under the new arrangement, still be subsidised by every taxpayer on the continent at around £18 per tonne.) One is the fact that no European politician wants to talk about trade or humanitarian injustices around sugar. ■ The global sugar export trade is worth $47bn. ■ Production is dominated by Brazil, India, the EU, China, Thailand and the US, which produce around 65% of the world’s sugar. ■ Sugar cane is a tall, bamboo-like grass that grows to a height of up to 6 metres (20ft) in mostly tropical countries. It is normally cut by hand and taken to sugar mills. Here the stems are crushed and ground and cane juice is extracted and used to make raw sugar. ■ Fairtrade focuses on sugar cane farmers in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, including some of the world’s least developed countries. ■ There are just over 37,000 sugar farmers organised into 69 Fairtrade small producer organisations. ■ Half of the €7.4m in Fairtrade Premium funds that Fairtrade sugar farmers earned in 2011 was invested by the producers in business and organisational development or production and processing. ■ Most global sugar production is from sugar cane. About 20% of the world’s sugar comes from sugar beet, which is produced in temperate areas including the EU. Source: Fairtrade International