It is often claimed that today’s citizen gets obese by consuming too much sugar – something I personally believe is more or less true. However, sugar was made affordable for the general public here in Sweden in the late 1800s and the consumption per capita peaked in the 1950s and has actually fallen since then. As usual - this indicates that the reality is a bit more complex than just a single factor...
The sugar industry here in Europe has its production based on beets, which is a process that is far less productive than making sugar out of canes. The sugar industry is really a strange business and it seems like various forms of subsidies, protection tariffs and other trade barriers have preserved the industry in a non-sustainable climate in almost every corner of the world, even in the most trade liberal countries (where Sweden is one example).
The industry has really had its hard times over the years and closures due to rationalizations have been commonplace. Between 1955 and 1965 a large number of smaller mills were closed when new transportation schemes did not require the mills to be located in the absolute vicinity to the farming areas. The dust settled and the de-facto monopoly carried on with relatively few changes until 1992, where the Swedish Sugar Co was acquired by its Danish counterpart. This triggered massive rationalizations and some five closed beet mills in ten years, today only one is left. Although this remaining one is very large, even by European standards, the future of the beet based sugar industry is highly uncertain. A massive EU deregulation of the sugar market was initiated some years ago will definitely make a real change. The question is of course if there will be any beet farming or any mills left in ten years from now.
I certainly feel surreal to walk around in these sites where everything is abandoned and silent. State-of-the-art equipment is left or partly removed to be sold as is or as scrap. Top modern sites where large capital investments were taken just five years ago have become history... Sic transit gloria mundi
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