In a breakthrough agreement, cane growers have now pledged $40 million to help clean up their destructive waste.

Some 155,000 cane growers, who each farm an average of 9 or 10 acres, sell cane to about 60 mills.

Florida companies, the most efficient cane growers, may find some of their poorer lands are no longer profitable and take them out of production.

Dozens of old sugar mills sold off in the last few years have closed, causing hardships for workers and cane growers alike.

He was a cane grower from 1943.

Protection of America's handful of sugar beet and cane growers, by contrast, costs consumers a mere $1 billion.

Despite the cane growers' muscle, President Clinton and his several Republican challengers all want to seem environmentally correct, especially in the nation's fourth-most-populous state.

The cane growers tell visitors that sugar is a bargain, one of the few products that does not cost more in 1991 than it did a decade earlier.

Much of the American sugar program resides in Florida, home of cane growers that produce about a quarter of the nation's sugar.

Then in the late 1980's, the Federal Government sued Florida, charging state officials with allowing the cane growers to pollute the Everglades.