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Sugar executive sees future of sugar related to ethanol's

By: McClatchy Newspapers, The Billings Gazette

1-29-2007

FARGO, N.D. - Bill Hejl started representing the region's sugar industry on a world scale in 2003.

That was before the ethanol boom.

Today, after traveling nine countries as president of the World Beet and Cane Growers Association, he has become aware of how sugar, ethanol and oil are intertwined. More and more, Hejl is becoming an optimist because ethanol production will sop up more sugar. His summary: Barring a decline in oil prices because of a collapse of the Chinese or Indian economy, or some large discovery of oil - or some amazing hydrogen fuel cell discovery - the price of oil and sugar are going to do very well.

"My son, John, is a senior at the University of North Dakota and expects to come home to the farm," he says. "I'm feeling better about his future, and the thing that makes me optimistic is biofuels."

In 2003, the executive committee of the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association asked Hejl whether he'd consider running for the president of the world association.

"Kaboom," he says.

The idea is that the U.S. (the Red River Valley) was going to host a world association congress, and the tradition is that the country that the next world president comes from the country that hosts the world congress.

Hejl found out that the job involved two trips a year - one to the Paris-based group's London "consultation with the International Sugar Organization" and the other to some other sweet spot in the world. Hejl consulted with his family and got the OK.

He went to the ISO fall consultation in London around Thanksgiving 2003. There were 25 countries represented, and it was an eye-opener.

The Red River Valley had prepared for a world "congress" in Fargo in 2003, but the event was scuttled because of the SARS outbreak.

In 2004, the group tried again, and Hejl was proud to host the event in Fargo.

Since 2003, the association has added 2 million farmers to the membership, as well as seven new countries. The highlight, of course, was hosting the Congress in 2004 and adding Brazil to membership that same fall.

In Fargo, Hejl and the association welcomed Manoel Ortolan, president of Orplana, a cooperative of a 200,000 Brazilian growers. He was accompanied by the co-op's treasurer, Maria Christina Pacheco. Organized in 1934, the Orplana co-op owns grocery stores, gas stations, a bank and hospitals and offers insurance for members.

In July 2005, the summer meeting was held in Brazil.

There, Hejl was golly-wowed by an impressive agricultural resource, including 6 to 9 feet of topsoil on basalt rock.

"It won't move, but you can till it," Hejl says. "It works up great, lovely stuff. And they've been growing cane there for 500 years, continous cane.

"Every magazine article I'd read had talked about poor roads in soybean country, but in sugar cane country, there were brand-new asphalt roads everywhere. And everything was cheap," he says.

He remembers buying pizza and beer for 15 people for $60.

It was at this Brazil meeting that Hejl saw his first chart that linked oil to sugar. The Brazilians themselves spoke with pride about how they'd subsidized ethanol production since 1978 - ethanol mandates, tax breaks, harvest manipulation for ethanol and on and on.

While the automobile industry in the U.S. struggles to make flex-fuel vehicles, car manufacturers such as Volkswagen sell cars in Brazil that consume 100 percent ethanol.

Hejl believes cold-weather differences between the countries eventually will get solved by technology.