President Clinton has approved a plan to return hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of expensive south-Florida farmland to the Everglades by buying the land at market rates. The main reason the land is expensive is that the land is used for growing cane sugar, a crop that can only grow in parts of Florida, and then not at all competitively. As a result, the crop is so heavily subsidized that American sugar prices are roughly three times that of the world price. Though it perhaps represents mere inference, it is reasonable to assume that removing the price supports would at least have made the Everglade buy-back much less expensive, if not obviate the plan altogether.

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