Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the Everglades Trust?
A: A 501(c)(4) corporation of non-elected board appointees, created to ensure Everglades restoration is completed on time and on budget. The Everglades Trust is committed to defend America’s Everglades and hold polluters and lawmakers accountable.

Q: How will the Everglades be restored?
A: The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) was approved in 2000. Made up of over 60 major components, the CERP is a $7.8 billion, thirty year plan. The plan is designed to repair the ecosystem of the Everglades to the conditions in which it was in before Everglades drainage began to destroy the natural water flow.

Q. Have any of the more than 60 component projects been authorized?
A: Yes, in 2000, 4 pilot projects at a total cost of $69 million:

1. Caloosahatchee River (C-43) Basin ASR
2. Lake Belt In-Ground Reservoir Technology
3. L-31 N Seepage Management
4. Wastewater Reuse Technology

And 10 projects and the Adaptive Assessment and Monitoring Program at a cost of $1.1 billion:

1. C-44 Basin Storage Reservoir
2. EAA Storage Reservoirs--Phase 1
3. Site 1 Impoundment
4. WCAs 3A/3B Levee Seepage Management
5. C-11 Impoundment and Stormwater Treatment Area
6. C-9 Impoundment and Stormwater Treatment Area
7. Taylor Creek/Nubbin Slough Storage and Treatment Area
8. Raise and Bridge East Portion of Tamiami Trail/Fill Miami Canal within WCA3
9. North New River Improvements
10. C-111 Spreader Canal

Q: How many of the authorized projects have been completed or are underway?
A: None. Florida Big Sugar has been successful at delaying the Restoration at every juncture.

Q: Do sugar crops play a major role in American culture?
A: No. The crops play an exceptionally small role in agriculture. They are planted on less than one percent of the nation's farms, and account for less than one percent of the planted acreage, and little more than one percent of total cash receipts from farming.

Q: Do sugar imports threaten the domestic sugar industry?
A: No. Sugar imports are declining, not increasing. When the Government's sugar subsidy program was adopted in 1981, imports totaled over 5 million tons. Today, they are little more than one million tons because the program stimulated a tremendous increase in domestic production.

Q: Is the Federal Sugar Program needed to protect consumers from high sugar prices?
A: No. It is estimated that consumers pay an extra $2 Billion annually in higher food prices.

Q. Does the sugar subsidy program merely provide a “safety net” designed to protect sugar producers and processors from bankruptcy?
A: No. It's not a “safety net,” it's a “hammock.” The program guarantees a profit to even the most inefficient of producers, and provides a windfall to the efficient producers, many of whom are corporations.

Q: Do other commodities receive the same protection?
A: No. The price supports provided to sugar producers are far more generous than the supports for other food crops.

Q: Is it a true market price, if world sugar is dumped on the market?
A: Three of the largest exporters, Australia, Brazil, and Thailand, are able to expand production and exports at world prices without the aid of subsidies. The U.S. price of raw sugar is currently three times the world price.

Q: Is the sugar program a burden on taxpayers?
A: In 1984, Commodity Credit Corporation sales of forfeited sugar cost the taxpayers $83,000,000. The program forces the government to pay millions more for its purchase of sugar and sugar containing products. In 2000 the cost to taxpayers was $459 Million for the loan default-buy back program.

Q: How much of the sugar subsidy benefits go to Florida privately-owned corporations (Big Sugar)?
A: $130,000,000 to the Fanjuls (Flo-Sun Corporation) and $95,000,000 to the Mott Foundation (51% owner of U.S. Sugar Corporation) in 1996 dollars.

Q: I've heard the sugar industry employs 420,000 Americans. Is this true?
A: USDA and Census data indicates that the sugar industry only employs from 40,000 to 70,000 people nationwide. And many of these are seasonal laborers. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost in the cane sugar refining and the food processing industries as a result of the subsidy program.