Sugar statistics for 2007/08

European beet and sugar production is primarily geared toward meeting domestic requirements. Contrary to practice in other important producing countries, sugar beets are primarily cultivated by farmers. Sugar beets in the EU are grown by about 246,000 farmers and the sugar is extracted in about 150 factories. During the 2007/08 financial year, 17,243 million tonnes of sugar were produced from beets in the EU, significantly more than the 16,672 million tonnes produced the year prior. This was due to the excellent sugar yield of 9.8 tonnes per hectare, even though the total beet cultivation area declined slightly from 1,797 ha in 2007 to the current 1,755 million ha. Including the 0.525 million tonnes remaining from last year, the total amount of sugar produced in 2007/08 was 17,768 million tonnes.