Undynamic

In its long history as a feast-or-famine business, the sugar industry has developed a quick defensive reflex: the minute prices weaken, the growers cut production. This year, a record world sugar output of 44.4 million tons is expected to top demand by 2,500,000 tons. Faced with the prospect of falling prices, such big sugar producers as Cuba and Puerto Rico are planning a slash of 20% to 30% in their 1953 output.

Last week Manhattan's Lamborn & Co., Inc., one of the top sugar brokers, called for a new set of reflexes in the trade. The trouble with the industry, said Lamborn, is not overproduction; it is underconsumption. What sugarmen need is the same kind of merchandising hustle that has created ever-growing markets for the goods of mass production in the U.S.

Consumption ranges all the way from 130 lbs. a year per capita in Australia down to six in Siam. In most places where consumption is low, it is because the price is high. In Spain, for instance, when raw sugar was selling for 4.2-c- a lb., refined sugar cost 29-c- retail (v. a U.S. price of 9.5-c-). Asks Lamborn: "Is it any wonder that Spain's per capita consumption of sugar continues low--a mere 16 lbs. . . .?"

In some nations, says the report, the high price results from "inordinately high taxes"; Turkey, for example, slapped a 16-c- tax on every pound in 1949, pushing the price up to 27-c-. Elsewhere, the price is kept artificially high by "government monopolies or government-approved cartels." Sugarmen should "estimate the great cost of restricting production as against the infinitesimal cost of taking some positive, dynamic steps to increase consumption."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.