Sugar policy: Brian Mast expected to cast historic vote to reduce sugar farmers' support

HUTCHINSON ISLAND — U.S. Rep. Brian Mast said Monday he'll probably vote for legislation to reduce support for sugar farmers.

"I expect I'll be supporting it when it comes up for a vote next week," Mast said of the Sugar Policy Modernization Act, "because it's important to the community I represent, and our waterways."

Editorial: It's time to modernize sugar policy

Under the current Farm Bill, the government protects U.S. sugar producers by setting a minimum price for sugar, limiting foreign imports and domestic production, loaning money to growers and permitting them to repay those loans with raw sugar if prices fall too low.

The proposed amendment to the bill would make sugar import quotas more flexible and protect taxpayers from government-funded buyouts of surplus sugar.

More: Read the Sugar Policy Modernization Act

Policy linked to project

Ninety members of Congress, both Republican and Democrats, have voiced support of the amendment.

Mast, whose 18th Congressional District includes Martin, St. Lucie and northern Palm Beach counties, is the only member of Florida's congressional delegation to support it.

"I'll probably be the only representative in the history of this district to vote against the sugar industry," Mast told a group of Treasure Coast environmentalists gathered at the Florida Oceanographic Society on Monday.

Mark Perry, the society's executive director, called the meeting to talk to Mast about pushing congressional approval of a reservoir to cut Lake Okeechobee discharges to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers.

The project and the sugar bill are linked, at least according to many environmentalists who think the proposed 10,100-acre reservoir and 6,500-acre man-made marsh to clean the water need to be bigger.

More: Environmentalists ask Sen. Nelson to support sugar reform

Everglades restoration

The reservoir is in the heart of the sugar-growing Everglades Agricultural Area, and support in the Farm Bill makes land there more valuable and sugar companies less likely to sell it to expand the project.

In fact, an alliance of 11 environmental groups asked U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, in a March 28 letter to vote for the amendment.

The groups, including the Everglades Trust, the Florida Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club and Bullsugar, called sugarcane production south of Lake O "a great impediment" to environmental restoration.

More: Read the letter to Nelson

Nelson said Friday he hasn't decided whether he'll support the bill.

"I don't want to have our agriculture industry unilaterally disarmed," the senator told St. Lucie County officials during a meeting at the St. Lucie County International Airport.

The American Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, estimates the program costs businesses and consumers between $2.4 billion and $4 billion a year.

Sugar reax

U.S. Sugar spokeswoman Judy Sanchez called the amendment the "Sugarcane Farmers Bankruptcy Act," in an email to TCPalm.

More: Reservoir plan submitted to Army Corps

Sugarcane farmers have been "the largest private partner in Everglades restoration efforts for more than 20 years," Sanchez wrote, "cleaning every drop of water leaving their farms, and paying nearly $450 million in taxes to further clean water and fund research into continued restoration efforts."

Farmers have given up 123,000 acres of productive farm land for restoration projects, Sanchez stated in the email.

Mast asked the environmentalists to help him seek support for the reservoir from "any member of Congress you have any pull with."

More: Lake Okeechobee reservoir land bought by South Florida Water Management District

WRDA

Plans for the reservoir developed by the South Florida Water Management District are being reviewed by the Army Corps of Engineers. If approved in time, the project could be part of the federal Water Resource Development Act being considered by Congress this fall.

Congress would have to approve paying for half the project, which is expected to cost about $1.4 billion. The Florida Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott have approved the state's half of the cost.

"If you know folks in Congress," Mast said, "let them know that there's state money for the projects sitting and waiting for a federal match. That's probably the best selling point you can make."