How One Family Quietly Took Over America's Entire Sugar Supply: Florida Crystals

In 1960, a family of Cuban exiles bought four thousand acres of Florida swampland with $640,000 and a sugar mill rebuilt from salvaged parts. Today, the Fanjul family controls roughly a third of America's sugar supply through Florida Crystals and the ASR Group — the world's largest cane sugar refiner. They own Domino Sugar, C&H, and Redpath. Their net worth exceeds $8 billion. And the federal sugar program that made it all possible costs American consumers up to $3.5 billion a year in inflated prices — a hidden tax on every grocery bill in the country that has survived every administration for ninety years. This is the story of how one family lost ten sugar mills to the Cuban Revolution, rebuilt an empire in the Everglades, split their political donations between both parties, cultivated personal relationships with sitting presidents, and quietly built the most powerful sugar lobby in American history — while the communities next to their cane fields live under falling ash and the workers on their Dominican Republic plantations face allegations of forced labor. Sources: Jose Fanjul Obituary & Family History — Palm Beach Daily News / Town & Country, August 2026 "The Fanjuls: The Quiet Dynasty That Controls America's Sugar" — Forbes, March 2025 "The Sugar Racket" — Vanity Fair, Patrick Radden Keefe profile of the Fanjul family U.S. Government Accountability Office — "Sugar Program: Observations on the Cost and Effects of the U.S. Sugar Program" Withhold Release Order on Central Romana Corporation — U.S. Customs and Border Protection, November 2022 "The Human Cost of Sugar" — Corporate Accountability Lab, Dominican Republic field investigation, August 2026