Brazil: The sugar beet sector will be greatly impacted by the Mercosur agreement

The signing of the Mercosur Free Trade Agreement, whose negotiations are reopening today in Brazil with the meeting of the main leaders, will have very serious consequences for the sugar beet sector in Spain and the EU, according to the UGT-FICA Sugar Trade Union Section. Sugar beet is a strategic crop and one of the main agro-industrial assets in Castilla y León and Andalusia, the main sugar-producing autonomous communities and where the five sugar factories and packaging centres of the country are located. The crop is also grown in the Basque Country, La Rioja, Navarra and Aragon. These are the facts regarding the sugar-beet sector: The treaty plans to allow the entry into the EU of 190,000 t of sugar free of tariffs, mostly from Brazil, the world's leading producer. This volume would be added to the concession made by the EU to Ukrainian sugar, which has gone from 21,000 t in 2021 to more than half a million in the current year. A volume that will enter the EU mostly from the ...