Abstract
THE United Kingdom Sugar Industry Inquiry Committee, the report of which (H.M.S.O. Cmd. 4871) was issued last week, failed to come to a unanimous conclusion on the fundamental issue of whether the beet sugar industry should be carried on with State assistance. The subsidy policy which was initiated in 1924 essentially as an experiment has already cost the Exchequer more than forty million pounds, and its extension for the present season will cost more than seven million pounds. Mr. Wilfred Greene, the chairman, and Sir Kenneth Lee, in their majority report, conclude that there is no reasonable prospect of the industry being permanently self-supporting. The principal value of the industry is as a relief measure to arable farming, but they consider the method extravagant and inequitable. Over the whole period of the subsidy, the cash payments to farmers have only just equalled the cost of assistance. The same acreage of beet could, in fact, have been, and still could be secured as cheaply by paying farmers to grow sugar beet and keep them on the farm for use as they thought fit. The majority is unable to recommend the continuance of State support beyond the maximum rate of duty preference grant to Colonial sugar, and it recognises that this would substantially mean the discontinuance of the beet sugar industry in Great Britain. Compensation to farmers is proposed for three years on an acreage basis.
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The Sugar Beet Industry in Great Britain. Nature 135, 610 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135610b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135610b0