Buyers scrambling for the rich, mucky land along the shores of Lake Okeechobee in Florida’s Everglades last week were paying as high as $1,000 an acre for land worth only $300 just six months ago. They were not Northerners planning vacation homes; they were Florida sugar-men looking for good cane-growing land so they can cash in on the sweet prosperity they see ahead for the domestic sugar industry, now that Cuban supplies are cut off.

“What happened in Cuba points up the necessity for a strong, healthy domestic production,” said President Harry T. Vaughn* of Florida’s biggest producer, United States Sugar Corp. The corporation is going to more than double its cane plantings in the next two years, to 65,000 acres, and put $20 million into a new mill and refinery. Within a few years, Florida’s raw cane production is expected to be five times the 175,000 tons it is today. So confident are Florida producers, says Vaughn, that even though they could not meet their last year’s quota, they will lobby hard with Congress for a 3.6% quota increase to 800,000 tons and a bigger share of the unfilled allotments of other producing areas.

Switch from Vegetables. New growers are entering the industry. Some 300 farmers have banded into the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida, and by next year will have a $6,000,000 mill operating. Growing sugar, at yields of $200 an acre, is more profitable than riding the ups and downs of raising vegetables. Refugee sugarmen from Cuba are jumping into the Florida mucklands to start anew after Castro grabbed their Cuban holdings. The Florida Sugar Corp. is setting up two mills and planting 2,000 acres, with $6,000,000 from the Bacardi rum interests. Osceola Farms, backed by three Cuban families, owns 4,400 acres and is negotiating for much more. The Cubans who are moving to the U.S. have a good example to follow. The Okeelanta Sugar Co. was started by two Cuban families in 1952 as a sideline to their island companies. Now their two Florida mills and vast acreage are worth almost as much as their $27 million worth of mills and land that were confiscated.

Sugar-beet producers, who supply 24% of U.S. consumption, also see a 10% increase in production to 2,700,000 tons this year. But the sugar-beet men are cautious about the future. They want to see what sort of sugar law Congress passes when the old one expires March 31. (Congress seems likely to follow Dwight Eisenhower’s request to extend the present law while a new sugar policy is worked out.) They are also wary of the effects of a sudden return to good relations with Cuba after their expansion plans are well under way. The Florida optimists scoff at this, say Cuba will never get as large a slice of the U.S. market as it did (3,100,000 tons, one-third of U.S. consumption).

Surplus Ahead? While U.S. growers hide comfortably behind quotas and price supports, the world market, where prices have remained fairly stable at 3¢ a Ib. since the U.S. cut off Cuban sugar, is threatened by a large surplus. Good growing weather has pushed estimated world production up 8% to a record 59.8 million tons, outpacing expected demand by 3.4 million tons. Cuba and Russia alone, the two largest sugar producers, may have 6.000,000 tons between them for export. If they dump it on the market, it could send world prices skidding.

* Not to be confused with Harry H. Vaughan, Harry Truman’s talkative military aide.

ncG1vNJzZmismaKyb6%2FOpmaaqpOdtrexjm9ta2ppbIZwrtSsoKedo6h6tMHGmqlmnpWrsrN7