WASHINGTON—The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) announced the marketing assistance loan rates for sugar for crop year 2016 (fiscal year 2017). CCC also announced provisions of the fiscal year 2017 domestic sugar program.
USDA offers marketing assistance loans to processors of sugarbeets and domestically grown sugarcane to provide interim financing to producers so that commodities can be stored after harvest when market prices are typically low to be sold later when price conditions are more favorable. The national average loan rate is 18.75 cents per pound for raw cane sugar and 24.09 cents per pound for refined beet sugar, the same as last year, and are adjusted regionally to reflect marketing cost differentials.
The loans are available beginning Oct. 1, 2016, and mature at the end of the nine-month period beginning the first day of the first month after the month in which the loan is made, or the end of the fiscal year in which the loan is made, whichever is earlier. Producers have the option of delivering the pledged sugar collateral to CCC as full payment for the loan at maturity.
Loan Rates for Refined Beet Sugar
The refined beet sugar processing regions and applicable 2016-crop (fiscal year 2017) loan rates in cents per pound of refined beet sugar are:
* Michigan and Ohio – 25.29
* Minnesota and the eastern half of North Dakota – 23.65
* Northeastern quarter of Colorado, Nebraska and the southeastern quarter of Wyoming – 24.00
* Montana, northwestern quarter of Wyoming and the western half of North Dakota – 23.71
* Idaho, Oregon and Washington – 24.23
* California – 24.70
Source: www.fsa.usda.gov