Cuba Sugar Harvest Delayed in the East
HAVANA TIMES — The milling of sugar cane in Cuba has been hampered by the damage to refineries, transportation problems and low crop yields resulting from Hurricane Sandy, which stuck the east of the island this past October.
There have been “serious problems with the mills and transportation in the five eastern provinces, which are responsible for over a third of the overall national plan,” said a source “close to the industry” who asked not to be identified.
Other sugar-producing provinces will have to extend their milling beyond the end of April if they are to reach their goal of 1.7 million tons, though the national sugar enterprise plans to close mills by May to prevent the deterioration of crop quality resulting from excessive heat and moisture.
For goodness sakes, if Cuba did not have bad news they would have no news at all. Last year’s sugar harvest was Cuba’s worst since 1905. The harvest from the year before was more than 850,000 tons short of the official forecast, following a downward trend that began in 2008. In 2002, Fidel slashed the number of refineries from 156 to 61 and fired
more than 100,000 sugarcane workers. He also dramatically reduced the amount of land planted with
sugarcane from 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) to around 750,000
hectares (1.85 million acres). Once the leading sugar producer n the world, the Castros and Cuban socialism have decimated this former leading industry. The embarassing failure of the “Ten Million Ton Harvest” in 1970 highlights the tragic history of sugar in Cuba since the Castros took over.