Hit by floods and droughts, this year's sugar crop was a disaster.
As a French colony, Haiti enjoyed fabulous riches from its sugar-cane crop.
Since Brazil relaxed price and production controls on sugar cane two decades ago, its crop has increased by two and a half times.
When sugar prices increase, so does next year's crop, leading to over-supply, and lower prices, a fall in production, and so on.
Of them, 135 were killed in accidents, giving a higher accidental death rate of one in 16, 000, even though the sugar harvest lasts much longer than that for any other crop.
Thanks to high prices on the world market, sugar has also helped to boost the economy, despite the smallest crop in more than a century.
Sugar cane, which is planted in the summer, is a water-intensive crop and farmers may shift to other crops temporarily, industry executives said.
In commodities, crop prices rose sharply, with corn up more than 6% and sugar at a three-year high on fears of a poor harvest in some parts of the globe.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA), has announced that US sugar supplies could run short this year as farmers could lose 21% of the 2011 crop if they are not able to start sowing in the spring.
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The equipment is expensive and is inevitably idle most of the year because it has to process a crop quickly, since sorghum, whose stem juice is anywhere from 12% to 20% sugar, spoils quickly.
With domestic sugar producers deprived of this profitable and protective tool, external producers might be able to sell more of their crop here, and with the profits buy US equipment or goods in return.
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The recent surge in sugar prices comes after a bad harvest, that of corn after official warnings of a lower-than-expected crop.
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The sugar harvest in 1998, beset by a series of weather disasters, was 3.2m tonnes: the smallest crop in 50 years.
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