Annick Girardin and Didier Guillaume confirm the continuation, for the duration of the cane agreements signed in Guadeloupe and Reunion Island, of national aid to sugarcane sectors in the overseas departments.

This announcement follows the various interpellations of socioprofessionals, elected officials and parliamentarians of the territories concerned.

The difficult situation that the sector is experiencing is linked to a sharp drop in sugar prices induced by the end of sugar quotas. This difficulty has been anticipated for the overseas sugar industry. Thus, an adjustment aid of €38 million per year was set up in 2017 for a period of 3 years with the agreement of the European Commission.

This aid, which will have to be notified again to the Commission, will be supplemented under the POSEI France program, financed by the European Union with an annual support of €69.2 million for the sugarcane sector of the French overseas departments and territories and a national aid amounting to €86.4 million per year. In the end, it is annually €193.6 million that will benefit the sugarcane industry of La Réunion and Guadeloupe by allowing them to produce nearly 250.000 tons of sugar per year.

Within the framework of this future notification, the ministers ask the actors of the sector to commit themselves to build, in connection with the other agricultural sectors and the elected officials of the communities, an agricultural model which makes it possible to take up the climatic and societal challenges with which it must cope, while taking into account changing market trends.

This reflection will culminate in July 2020 with proposals on upmarket upgrading, upgrading of ultramarine origin, strengthening of organic production, the transition to energy cane and the development of new sectors to overcome imports in particular livestock feed.

Sustainable state support for this sector will be linked to the capacity it will have to adapt by building with all the actors in the territories concerned a global agricultural project, sustainable over time.