Ethanol is a hot topic these days even though the public's interest in alternative fuels fluctuates with prices at the pump. Using Brazil as the poster child for ethanol production, some berate Florida sugar growers and assume they could do the same and produce ethanol as profitably if sugar prices were lower.

Getting into the ethanol business is more complicated that that. Florida's sugarcane farmers have looked seriously at ethanol production, and specifically at Brazil's model. The fact is, regardless of the price of sugar, we cannot grow sugarcane and produce ethanol at current ethanol prices. Brazil can do so at a profit only because they pay third-world wages, dump the effluent out on the land and rivers and have government-subsidized storage and infrastructure.

Florida's sugar producers pay union wages with comprehensive benefit packages and operate under the most stringent environmental regulations in the world. Lowering the price of sugar so that we can sell ethanol at a loss will only destroy our sugar industry without producing any ethanol.

We agree that fuel independence would be a great thing, and we will continue to follow the politics and economics of sugar ethanol production. However, for ethanol production from sugarcane to work under American conditions, either the price of ethanol has to be higher or the government has to intervene as it did in Brazil.

Belle Glade resident Judy Sanchez is director of corporate communications of U.S. Sugar Corp.