Farm Service Agency

Public Affairs Staff

1400 Independence Ave SW

Stop 0506, Room 3624-South

Washington, DC 20250-0506

Release No. 1529.05

WASHINGTON, April 29, 2005 - The U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced the reassignment of unused cane sugar allocations from processors in Hawaii and Louisiana to processors in Florida and Texas. There are no allocations to be made for the beet sector.

2004 Crop Year Reassignments

The overall allotment quantity (OAQ) and allocations to individual states were made Sept. 28, 2004. At the midpoint of the marketing year, the use of the allocations has been reviewed and today's announcement is a result of that review.

CCC is required to make a determination on the need for reassignments after evaluating current inventories, estimated production, expected marketings and other factors deemed appropriate to determine a processor's ability to market its full allocation.

Based on estimates published in the April 2004 World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates report (WASDE) and other data available to the CCC, the allotment for Louisiana is reduced 100,000 short tons, raw value (STRV) and the Hawaiian allotment is reduced 35,000 (STRV). This quantity is reassigned as follows: Florida 124, 203 STRV and Texas 10,797 STRV.

The reassignment is determined in two steps. The September 2005 production forecast for Louisiana indicates that certain Louisiana processors will be unable to use 123,030 STRV of their allocation. This amount is the reallocated to where shortages may exist in the cane sector. Of that amount, 23,030 STRV were redistributed within Louisiana to meet the allocation shortages of other processors. The remaining 100,000 STRV was combined with Hawaii's 35,000 STRV excess allotment, and redistributed to Texas and Florida processors according to their allocation shares. CCC will continue to monitor production and make adjustments as deemed necessary.

The revised 2004 crop year cane sugar state marketing allotments and processor allocations are listed in the following table: (pdf).

For more information, contact Barbara Fecso at (202) 720-4146, barbara.fecso@usda.gov.

NOTE: Farm Service Agency (FSA) news releases and media advisories are available on the Web at: http://www.fsa.usda.gov