Sugar statistics for 2009/10

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 2009/10 financial year, 17,504 million tonnes of sugar were produced from beets in the EU - about 14 percent more than in the previous year. Very favorable weather conditions in some EU-countries led to sugar yields above-average. The sugar yield of the EU altogether is 11.1 tonnes per hectare (previous year: 10,3 tonnes per hectare). Total beet cultivation area was expanded by 5.4 percent to 1.540 million hectares. Including the 0.414 million tonnes remaining from last year, the total amount of sugar produced in the financial year 2009/10 is 17,918 million tonnes.