COMMODITIES: Sweet War Baby

Not since World War II has sugar, a traditional war baby, been traded so furiously on the commodity exchange. Future prices for the past several weeks have soared from $3.30 to $5.30 a 100 Ibs., the highest since the Korean war. Last week U.S. sugar refiners in the Northeast boosted their prices for the third time since October, to the highest figure since 1923.

The rise was not all due to the Middle East war scare. In the past few years the Cuban sugar surplus has dropped from 2,000,000 to less than 1,000,000 tons, and production has gone down in many...

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