Hundreds of thousands of acres of sugar cane fields cover land in western Palm Beach County that used to be part of the Everglades. (Mark Randall / Sun Sentinel)

In June, Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed Senate Bill 2508, which critics said would have strengthened the sugar industry’s claim on state water resources at the expense of the Everglades. Score the round Environment and Tourism 1, Big Sugar 0.

Florida is home to the nation’s largest sugar cane industry, centered on what were once wetlands south of Lake Okeechobee. The industry generates income for a small group of sugar producers, but only with a big assist from a federal sugar program that restricts imported sugar at the expense of American families, manufacturing and the Florida environment.

Since the 1930s, the U.S. government has supported the domestic sugar industry through an elaborate, Soviet-style import quota and price support system. The program essentially guarantees the domestic sugar industry 85% of the domestic market and a minimum price of 20 cents per pound for raw cane sugar and 25 cents for beet sugar. My Cato Institute colleague Colin Grabow in a 2018 study of the program rightly accused Washington of “operating a sugar cartel in our midst.”

Daniel Griswold is an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute and author of the book, “Mad about Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization.” (Jonathan Timmes/Jonathan Timmes)

This government-enabled cartel has distorted land and water use in Florida, contributing to the coastal “red tide” and inland blue-green algae blooms. The nitrogen-fed outbursts have killed fish, manatees, sea turtles and other wildlife, costing the state an estimated $20 million a year in lost tourism revenue.

Sugar industry representatives respond that their industry accounts for only a small share of the agricultural runoff flowing into Lake Okeechobee and from there east and west through the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers. But the biggest environmental impact from the sugar industry is the large section of reclaimed farmland it occupies between the lake and the Everglades to the south.

When that land was part of the Everglades decades ago, before being drained for the sugar industry, it would naturally filter out nutrients from the lake as water flowed south. As Dr. Larry Brand, professor of marine biology at the University of Miami, explains, “Wetlands are very good at taking up those nutrients, so you have nice clean water released out of the wetlands. The problem is now the northern third of the Everglades has been drained and turned into these sugar cane fields. That’s what forces engineers to release the water to the east and the west.”

Reforming or repealing the federal government’s sugar program would loosen the power of the sugar industry over Florida’s water resources, allowing a restoration of the cleaner, more natural flow of fresh water through the Everglades.

Reform would also benefit tens of millions of Americans families who are forced to pay higher grocery bills because of inflated prices for domestic sugar. In the past four decades, according to the 2018 Cato report, the domestic price of sugar in the United States has been almost twice as high as the average world price of sugar. The higher cost for raw sugar feeds through to higher prices at the grocery store for bakery goods and other sugar-containing products.

The sugar program has also crippled the domestic confectionary industry by artificially inflating the cost of its main ingredient. A 2006 study by the U.S. Commerce Department concluded that for each job in sugar production that was “saved” by the sugar program, nearly three confectionary manufacturing jobs were lost. The study calculated that the cost to the rest of the U.S. economy for each sugar job saved was $826,000.

Florida’s government tried unsuccessfully more than a decade ago to repurchase the sugar fields and restore their natural state, but the entrenched interests of the sugar program were too much to overcome. While the recent veto of SB 2508 was a step in the right direction, the ultimate answer lies in ending the import quotas and price supports from Washington — an opportunity that will come before Congress when it rewrites the Farm Bill next year.

Standing up to the sugar industry on behalf of the general public has been an uphill battle. Florida sugar growers spread millions of dollars in campaign donations each election cycle to state and federal candidates. The state’s consumer, tourism and environmental constituencies can’t match the sugar industry’s concentrated lobbying firepower.

More Florida politicians need to take the lead in repealing a program that gives the sugar industry such outsized influence over Florida’s freshwater resources.

Daniel Griswold is an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute and author of the book, “Mad about Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization.”