Sugar: exports of major countries 2023/2024
Brazil has the highest export volume of sugar of any country, at about 35.97 million metric tons as of 2023/2024. The second largest sugar exporter, Thailand, had significantly less export volume compared to Brazil, at about 10 million metric tons of sugar that year.
Sugar production in Brazil
As well as being the top exporter of sugar, Brazil is also the top producer of sugarcane in the world by a large margin. In 2021, Brazil produced some 715.7 million metric tons of sugarcane, almost twice as much as India, the second largest producer. Once the sugarcane is refined into pure sugar, Brazil produced nearly 35 million metric tons of processed sugar in 2022/2023. This figure has fluctuated over the last several years.
Global sugar consumption
Between 2010 and 2023, global sugar consumption has increased by over million metric tons, from 156 million metric tons to around 176 million metric tons. The top three countries by sugar consumption in 2022/2023 were India, the European Union, and China, in that order. Though China has a larger population than India, India consumed about 12.5 million metric tons more sugar than China in that year.