§ Mr. Spearingasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the approximate total acreage of sugar beet sown in 1976; what is the estimated 1976 crop in raw sugar (a) on the basis of an average yield and (b) on the yield for 1975; and what is the approximate acreage required on average yield to attain his White Paper target.
§ Mr. BishopAt 8th May, 510,670 acres of sugar beet had been sown. It is too early to estimate the 1976 sugar crop.
An average yield of 1.9 tons of white sugar per acre would produce a total crop of 970,000 tons of white sugar. In 1975–76 the average yield of white sugar per acre was 1.32 tons, and multiplying this by the presently planted acreage would give about 675,000 tons of white sugar. Information available relates to white not raw sugar.
The White Paper "Food from our own Resources" projected that by 1980 about 600,000 acres would need to be sown to sugar beet to produce 1.28 million tons of white sugar. As a step towards this the British Sugar Corporation's target for 1976 was 510,000 acres.