Oxfam sugar plans ‘will drive beet growers out of business’

BEET growers would be driven out of business and cane growers in the world’s poorest countries would be damaged if Oxfam proposals for the EU sugar regime were implemented, the Irish Farmers Association warned yesterday.

The British development charity claims that European Commission proposals to reform Europe’s sugar sector, as they stand, will continue to allow big companies to hurt farmers in developing countries by dumping subsidised sugar.

But there are fears in Ireland that any significant reduction in import tariffs would throw the European market wide open to cheap sugar from other countries and collapse the price of beet.