Sugar Shortage Looms as Storm Ruins Australian Crop
February 6th, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
World sugar output will probably fall short of demand, said Rabobank, after a cyclone with winds stronger than Hurricane Katrina destroyed homes and smashed crops in Australia, driving prices to 30-year highs.
Tropical Cyclone Yasi ripped through northern Queensland, a region growing a third of the country’s cane, cutting output potential in the area by about 50 percent, producers group Canegrowers said Feb. 4. The storm, which the government says may have wiped out at least A$500 million ($507 million) of agricultural production, raised speculation that the world’s third-largest sugar exporter may struggle to match last year’s output that was the lowest in two decades.
