Where does sugar come from?

Sugar is sucrose, and two very different plants make it. Sugar cane is a giant tropical grass that stores sugar in its stalk over twelve to eighteen months and yields best where a hot, wet growing season is followed by a cool or dry ripening period: Brazil's Center-South, the Indo-Gangetic plain, Thailand's northeast, Guangxi in southern China, Pakistan's Punjab and Mexico. Sugar beet is a temperate root crop sown in spring and lifted in autumn across northern France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Egypt's delta and the northern United States. Cane accounts for the large majority of world sugar; beet is the reason Europe and Russia appear at all.

The production figures on this page count centrifugal raw sugar, the crystallized product of both plants. In 2023 Brazil produced 42 million tonnes, 22% of the world's 187.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT), followed by India with 37 million tonnes (20%) and Thailand (5.5%). The top five made 57% of the total. Behind those figures sit the crops themselves: world sugar cane harvested in 2024 weighed 1.9 billion tonnes, led by Brazil, and sugar beet 293.6 million tonnes, led by Russia (FAOSTAT).

Why Brazil? Cane came to the Portuguese colony in the sixteenth century, but the modern industry was built by policy: the Proálcool program of 1975 taught mills to switch between sugar and ethanol, flex-fuel cars from 2003 gave ethanol a domestic market, and the flat, rain-fed land of São Paulo, Goiás and Minas Gerais allowed fully mechanized harvesting. India's position rests on a different mechanism: a government-set cane price that rewards farmers regardless of the sugar market, so area stays high in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra whether or not the world needs the sugar. Thailand's growers sit between cassava and cane and switch with relative prices, and the European Union's beet industry contracted after quotas ended in 2017.

Raw and refined sugar are separate markets. Raw sugar (HS 170114, about 96 to 99 degrees polarization) ships in bulk from mills to refineries near the consumer; refined white sugar (HS 170199) ships in bags and containers, mostly to countries without refineries. In 2024 world exports of sugar (HS 1701) were worth $43.1 billion (CEPII BACI), and Brazil supplied 47% of that value, followed by Thailand (5.8%) and India. Brazil led raw sugar exports in 2024 with 73% of the value, while Brazil led refined exports in 2024 with 15%.

Importers are more spread out. Indonesia was the largest in 2024 with 6.5% of world import value, ahead of United States and Saudi Arabia. Standalone refineries in the Gulf, the Red Sea, Algeria, Malaysia and Indonesia buy raws from Brazil and sell whites into their regions, so a country can be a large importer of raws and an exporter of whites at once. India's exports swing from nothing to several million tonnes depending on the season and its government's quota, which is the single largest source of uncertainty in the trade.

Two futures contracts anchor the market. ICE Futures US Sugar No. 11 (ticker SB, 112,000 pounds, quoted in US cents per pound) is the world raw sugar price, deliverable FOB at ports in Brazil and a list of other origins. ICE Futures Europe White Sugar No. 5 (ticker W, 50 tonnes, US$/t) prices refined sugar delivered FOB in bulk containers. The difference between the two, the "white premium", is the margin available to a refinery, and it widens when refined stocks run short. Physical trades add a premium or discount for origin, polarization and delivery period, and Brazilian raws are often sold months ahead against the futures curve.

The series used on this page is World raw sugar (ISA daily price), which the International Sugar Organization computes from the No. 11 settlement. In August 2026 it stood at $0.38/kg, up 3% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal high was $1.24/kg in November 1974, and its low since 1960 was $0.03/kg in September 1966. Two protected markets are quoted separately: the US domestic raw price (No. 16) was $0.82/kg and the EU white price $0.38/kg in the same month. Both sit above the world price because tariffs and quotas keep world sugar out.

Three ambiguities matter. Production here is centrifugal raw sugar, so India's and Brazil's totals depend on how much cane the mills chose to turn into ethanol rather than sugar. Cane and beet tonnages are shown separately and are not sugar. And a world price in dollars per kilogram converts to cents per pound by multiplying by 100 and dividing by 2.2046, so the No. 11 quote and the World Bank series read differently for the same day.

Center-South mills can send cane juice to sugar or to ethanol, and they switch with the relative price. When gasoline prices set by Petrobras rise or Brazil's ethanol blend mandate tightens, ethanol pays better and the sugar mix falls; when world sugar rallies, the mix climbs into the high forties as a share of cane. Because Brazil supplies most of the traded raw sugar, a few points of mix equal millions of tonnes of supply, and crude oil prices feed into sugar through this channel.

Brazil's cane is rain-fed and harvested from April to November; a dry spring in São Paulo cuts both cane tonnage and sugar content, and fires in a dry August can destroy standing cane. India's cane and Thailand's depend on the monsoon, and a weak season shows up a year later in lower crush and export bans. El Niño years have tended to combine Indian and Thai shortfalls with wet Brazilian harvests that slow crushing.

Sugar keeps well, so stocks buffer the market and the stocks-to-use ratio signals how much cushion exists. USDA put world centrifugal sugar stocks-to-use at — for 2026/27, against — in 2025/26 (USDA PSD). Much of the stock sits in India and China, where policy rather than price decides whether it is exported, so traders discount those tonnes when judging tightness in the free market.

India is the swing exporter. Its government sets the cane price farmers receive, caps or bans exports when domestic prices rise (as in the 2023/24 season), subsidizes exports when stocks pile up (a policy a WTO panel ruled against in 2021), and directs cane to ethanol under its blending program. Each decision is announced season by season, so the size of India's exportable surplus is the main unknown in every annual balance.

Mills sell sugar in dollars and pay cane growers, wages and fuel in reais. A weaker real raises the local value of each cent per pound, encouraging mills to price sugar for export and to favor sugar over ethanol; a stronger real does the reverse. Because Brazil is the marginal supplier, the No. 11 price in dollars tends to move inversely with the real even when the crop is unchanged.

Refining is energy-intensive and refineries in the Gulf, Europe and Asia buy raws against the No. 11 and sell whites against the No. 5. When natural gas or coal prices spike, refining margins compress unless the white premium widens, and refiners cut runs. Ocean freight matters too: raws move in bulk on Supramax ships and whites in containers, so the two contracts respond to different freight markets.

China regulates sugar imports through a tariff-rate quota, automatic import licenses and, at times, a sliding-scale duty; Indonesia licenses raws for its refineries season by season. Changes in either country's rules shift several million tonnes of demand between the world market and domestic stocks, and Chinese out-of-quota tariffs decide whether syrup and premix imports become a back door for sugar.

High-fructose corn syrup competes with sugar in soft drinks where corn is cheap, chiefly the United States, and non-caloric sweeteners and sugar taxes have flattened per-person consumption in richer countries. Growth comes from South and Southeast Asia and Africa, where incomes and processed-food sales rise. Beet sugar in the EU also competes with isoglucose since quotas ended, capping the EU white price.

Cane is planted from stalk cuttings and cut for the first time after twelve to eighteen months, then regrows as ratoons for four or five further annual harvests before replanting. Brazil's Center-South harvests from April to November, India from October to April, Thailand from December to April, so some origin is always crushing. Mechanical harvesters cut green cane in Brazil and Australia; hand-cut cane, often burned first to strip the leaves, remains common in India and much of Asia and Africa. Cane must reach the mill within a day or two of cutting because sucrose begins to invert as soon as the stalk is severed, which is why mills sit inside their own cane fields.

At the mill the cane is shredded and crushed or diffused to extract juice, which is clarified with lime and heat, evaporated to syrup and boiled under vacuum until sucrose crystallizes. Centrifuges spin the crystals free of the mother liquor, giving raw sugar of roughly 96 to 99 degrees polarization (the sucrose share by weight) and molasses. The fibrous residue, bagasse, fuels the mill's boilers and, in Brazil, exports electricity to the grid; molasses and juice are fermented to ethanol; filter mud returns to the fields. Beet is different: roots are sliced into cossettes, sugar is diffused out in hot water, the juice is purified with lime and carbon dioxide and crystallized directly into white sugar, leaving beet pulp for cattle and molasses for yeast and feed.

Refining turns raw sugar into white. Raws are washed (affination), dissolved, decolorized with carbon or ion-exchange resins, filtered and recrystallized to a color below 45 ICUMSA units, the specification for refined sugar in most contracts. Plantation white made directly at the mill (around 150 ICUMSA) serves domestic markets in India and elsewhere, and very-high-polarization raws sit between the two. Sugar content per tonne of cane runs at roughly a tenth to an eighth, and it falls when cane is harvested wet or too young.

Most sugar is eaten, either from the bag or, more often, inside soft drinks, confectionery, baked goods, dairy desserts and processed foods; industrial buyers take the larger share in rich countries and households in poorer ones. The next largest use is fuel: Brazil turns a large part of its cane into ethanol for flex-fuel cars and India diverts cane juice and molasses to meet its blending target. Molasses feeds yeast, rum and cattle; bagasse generates power and makes paper and packaging; and sucrose is a fermentation feedstock for citric acid, amino acids and bioplastics. Sugar's competitors in sweetening are corn syrup and non-caloric sweeteners.

Milling is tied to the cane field, so processing concentrates in the growing regions: hundreds of mills across São Paulo and Goiás, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, Thailand's northeast and Guangxi. Ownership is concentrated too. Raízen, Tereos, Wilmar, Mitr Phol, COFCO and the Indian mill groups operate clusters of mills, and Brazil's sugar leaves through a handful of terminals at Santos and Paranaguá, reached by road and by Rumo's rail line from the interior. Refineries sit at the other end, in Dubai, Jeddah, Algeria, Malaysia, Indonesia and the ports of Europe and North America, and turn raws into the white sugar their regions consume.

Santos is the chokepoint. Sugar competes for berths and rail slots with soybeans and corn, and in the peak months of the Center-South crush a queue of ships waits outside the port; a wet harvest or a truckers' strike delays loadings for everyone. Thailand's exports funnel through Laem Chabang and the river terminals below Bangkok, India's through Kandla and Mundra on the west coast. Raws to Asia and the Middle East cross the Atlantic and round the Cape or pass Suez, so Red Sea disruption lengthens the route for a third of world trade.

The single points of failure are Brazil's Center-South, which supplies most of the free-market raws, and Indian policy, which can add or remove millions of tonnes with one notification. A dry spring or a wave of fires in São Paulo has no substitute at short notice, because other exporters' surpluses are small and the refineries that depend on Brazilian raws cannot switch feedstock.