Global trade in sugar is one of the most distorted of all commodity markets, thanks to sugar lobbies that frequently punch well above their weight when demanding subsidies and tariff protection.

The world sugar market has often been called a “dump market” by many sugar growers. Prices are depressed by cheap sugar from efficient producers like Brazil and Thailand that are kept out of rich countries’ markets, and by those rich countries, particularly the European Union, that dump subsidised sugar that exceeds their own needs.