One key reason that American carbonated sugar water typically uses high fructose corn syrup and not cane sugar is federal policies designed to protect the American sugar business and artificially inflate the price of sugar. USDA guarantees a minimum price to sugar processors, and it assigns a maximum production limit to each processor and imposes a tariff rate quota on imported sugar to prevent oversupply. USDA also requires that 54.35 percent of domestic production allotment be derived from beet processors and 45.65 percent from sugarcane processors. Almost all the sugar cane comes from Florida and Louisiana, while the bulk of the beets comes from Minnesota, Idaho and North Dakota. The end result is world price of sugar sitting at 21 cents per pound last year, while the United States price was 38 cents per pound. This system and that price difference are the reasons for American beverage companies switching to high fructose corn syrup around the same time the government sugar program adopted its current form in 1981. Incidentally, about 3 percent of the U.S. corn crop goes to high fructose corn syrup.
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