The Story Behind the Sugar Bowl

Going around the internet is an AP story of sugar's relation to Louisiana and the Sugar Bowl. The crop was in the French colony for a while but it took a slave rebellion in present-day Haiti to cause a surge in production with plantation owners moving operations from the island to the mainland.

In the 1920s the sugar industry in Louisiana was nearly destroyed but importing of Asian varieties of the cane allowed the crop to come back. The proposal of the Sugar Bowl was meant to emphasize that sugar was back and its importance to the state.

Today America's sugar industry in Louisiana, Florida, and Hawaii is doing well but under false preeminence. Tariffs keep the cost of foreign sugar high eliminating much foreign competition. This not only makes drinks like Pepsi and Coke use corn syrup instead of sugar, it also limits the marketability of sugar-based ethanol.