When the global Covid-19 pandemic was at its high alert point in 2020 and 2021, one non-health related concern arose when supply chains were disrupted. You might remember some food items and ingredients meant for grocery stores, retailers and restaurants were not available as a result. It was a time when industries and businesses became creative in their distribution methods whenever possible. As an example…

“We learned during the pandemic that when restaurants and institutions shut down, everybody pivoted to the grocery stores, and we were able to put about 50,000,000 four-pound bags of sugar on the shelf. So there was never a shortage of sugar during the pandemic.”

Yet, according to Luther Markhardt of the American Sugar Alliance, distribution challenges did occasionally arise during the pandemic.

“Any little hiccups typically are a transportation issue. It’s getting truck drivers or getting the rail cars on time. Those are the little glitches that we found during Covid. But all the time, we’re in very good shape to take care of our customers.”

He credits the ability to distribute sugar during the global covid outbreak to a ground level producer-led system.

“We all work very close together. In fact, all the sugar beet factories in the United States are owned by the farmers. We have a very good, tight supply chain. Everybody needs to make sure that they succeed. It’s very much the same way with the cane and cane refiners. Most of the cane refiners are owned by sugar cane farmers. So we have a very efficient, a very motivated supply chain within our industry, and we want to make sure we get our product to the customers. We’ve got 90 distribution facilities strategically located all over the United States, and if something happens with one producer or another, we can step in and fill in and take care of the American consumer.”

But what about going forward regarding supply chain and distribution improvements for our nation’s sugar industry? Markhardt says, while the basic product of sugar, whether cane or beet processed, never changes, the focus shifts to making both the production and distribution of sugar more efficient.

“What changes is how we produce it. We’ve got technologies all in our seed and our fertilizers, all kinds of things that would blow people’s minds of how technical it is to be a sustainable, efficient, producer of our product, and there’s lots of things coming in the pipeline.”