If there's a global commodity market with more dramatic ups and downs than sugar in 2014, Food Dive hasn't heard of it.
In early September, the most actively traded sugar contract on the ICE Futures U.S. exchange dropped to 14.52 cents a pound. That was the lowest futures price for the sweetener here in the U.S. since June 2010.
In cash markets, things were about the same. Prices fell toward record lows last year and then languished. By early November, the price had soared 40% - adding about $2.4 billion in annual costs for U.S. confectionery producers.
In Europe, there's been a similarly dramatic swing. Sugar last year was at record lows, but now it has surged.
The reasons for the price swings, however, are not the same on both sides of the Atlantic. A series of unusual conditions in different nations have brought chaos to the sugar world.
Here's a look at the five factors weighing on the sugar trade:
The U.S. versus Mexico
Late this summer, the U.S. government decided to impose countervailing duties on imports of Mexican sugar. U.S. regulators say Mexico is offering illegal subsidies to its sugar producers, who are in turn dumping cheap sugar in the U.S.
Certainly this wasn't the scenario that trade negotiators envisioned when the North American Free Trade Agreement expanded in 2008 to include sugar, granting Mexican producers open access to the States.
While the U.S. weighs just how much it would impose in duties, and while Mexico files legal protests, the price of sugar in the U.S. has jumped.
Complicating matters, of course, is that the U.S. has a sugar subsidy program of its own that holds prices artificially high.
The end of European supports
Europe has a sort of subsidy system of its own for sugar, but pending changes there are bringing price uncertainty.
Under the European system, which has existed in one form or another since 1968, regulators set a minimum price for sugar beets and impose production quotas on each nation within the European Union.
Those production quotas, however, are set to expire in 2017. Expectations that such an expiration will lead to a tremendous boost in sugar output has sent prices tumbling. That, in turn, is crimping earnings for giant sugar producers such as Associated British Foods.
Record beet crop
Sugar-beet growers in the U.S. are in the midst of what appears to be an extraordinarily strong harvest.
All three of the major U.S. growing areas are reporting record-size crops. That's likely putting downward pressure on sugar prices, thus mitigating some of the upward pressure of the trade fight with Mexico.
But one additional factor is probably limiting that downward pressure - there's some concern that the sugar-beet harvest is so big that the processing industry may not be able to handle it.
Brazilian woes
As tough as the sugar market is in North America and Europe, it's much tougher in Brazil.
A series of factors - most notably the low prices for sugar globally and some awful weather for growing sugar cane - have crippled much of the industry.
Bunge, which only entered the Brazilian sugar trade in 2009, has apparently had enough already. The agribusiness giant is looking to unload its sugar operations there.
Rival sweeteners
Imagine what would happen to the market for, say, durum wheat, if there were suddenly a half-dozen other products that could also be used to make pasta. That's the kind of pressure sugar is facing.
The world is suddenly filled with sugar alternatives. Some, like high fructose corn syrup, have been around for quite some time now. Their effect on sugar prices is pretty well known. But now HFCS and artificial sweeteners like aspartame are growing less popular with consumers.
One might assume that would drive sugar prices higher, but there's also a new generation of sweeteners gaining traction with food and beverage producers and putting downward pressure on sugar. Stevia, which is used in the new Coca-Cola Life product, is the most obvious example. But even there, the effects on sugar aren't quite so clear. Stevia is often paired with sugar in soft drinks, which is boosting the demand for both sweeteners.
Complicating matters is that some of the oldest known alternatives to sugar are suddenly experiencing price swings. Monk fruit, for example, had been nearly forgotten by the industry, but now prices are rising. Honey producers have seen their stock plummet amid unexplained problems with bees.
The result of all this is sugar is facing every type of pricing pressure and from every possible source. Sometimes sugar prices are pushed higher, sometimes they are driven lower.
And that's why what sugar can't seem to do - pardon the pun - find its sweet spot.