I assume you mean the sugar beet?

Cane sugar is cheaper than beet sugar.

Alas, the sugar beet industry is also just another creature of tariffs and subsidies.

See eg https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-us-spends-4-billion-a-... for the US. The situation in Europe was similar when I last looked, but that was at least a decade ago.

AFAIK sugar in Europe is mostly refined beet sugar, while refined ir brown cane sugar costs much more.

Yes, and as far as I know that's down to tariffs and subsidies in the EU.

See https://www.researchgate.net/figure/White-Sugar-Prices-Euro-... to see that sugar is much more expensive inside the EU than on the world market.

And https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-sugar-prices-graphic-i... and https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/food-farming-f...

https://www.ragus.co.uk/tariffs-on-sugars-explained/ also seemed interesting. They say:

> The basic tariff for importing direct consumption sugar into the EU is €419 per tonne. So, every tonne of sugar imported from a non-EU country costs an extra €419. Raw sugar imported into the EU is to be further refined into white sugar attracts a tariff of €339 per tonne.