Utah Sugar Company

The Utah-Idaho Sugar Company was a large sugar beet processing company based in Utah. It was owned and controlled by the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and its leaders. It was notable for developing a valuable cash crop and processing facilities that was important to the economy of Utah and surrounding states. It was part of the Sugar Trust, and subject to antitrust investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Hardwick Committee.

Since sugar was primarily an imported product in the late 19th century, from areas that cultivate sugar cane and sugar beets, there was support in the United States to produce it internally and prevent the more than $500 million annually that was paid out for imports.Sugar beet processing was attempted in 1830 near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but the first successful factory was E. H. Dyer's 1879 Standard Sugar Refining Company factory in Alvarado, California.James Wilson, the United States Secretary of Agriculture in 1898, reported that 150,000 copies of an 1897 USDA farmers' bulletin on sugar beets had been distributed and "the demand appears to be unabated." Sugar beets were cultivated in Michigan north of Detroit, among other areas.

By 1888, Arthur Stayner and Elias Morris from the failed Deseret Manufacturing Company convinced LDS apostle Wilford Woodruff, and the church, that sugar beets and processing would be a good enterprise.

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