AREQUIPA, Peru – Of the 2,260 hectares of tobacco that the Cuban regime plans to plant this year in Sancti Spíritus, farmers in that province have only agreed to plant about 794, which represents 35% of the estimated total.
A report from the state newspaper Escambray He points out that Sancti Spíritus, the second largest producer of tobacco on the island, is committed to harvesting 2,569 tons of tobacco, with a yield of 1.1 tons per hectare.
However, with the seedbed sowing phase beginning in September to start planting in October, by the second half of August barely a third of the contracted hectares had been reached.
In this scenario, the production figures of the province will continue to be below official forecasts, for the moment with only 948 tons of tobacco, a minuscule growth compared to the 2023-2024 campaign.
In this regard, the agricultural director of the Tobacco Collection and Processing Company of Sancti Spíritus, Isidro Hernández Toledo, acknowledged that in the last three harvests the variety of tobacco known as sol en palo has decreased considerably.
“There is a delay. Tobacco was supposed to have been contracted between March and April, but by waiting for some incentive to be found for the sol en palo method, the contracting for the new season has been delayed,” said the official in reference to payment in dollars, a demand of the tobacco growers, who are compensated in Cuban pesos.
According to the director, a payment in MLC was “finally” approved and they estimate that a recovery can begin since it will in some way please the farmers.
“Because today in national currency, tobacco sol en palo does not have good profitability and it has been one of the main reasons why producers They stopped sowing“, Hernández Toledo pointed out.
However, the new incentive in the payment system could generate discontent among farmers, since it will seek to “pay for quality” and not for work.
“It consists of the right of producers who sow it to buy foreign currency, applying 2 percent to the value of the classes that make up the prices, deducting the cost of imports and national productions that have a component in MLC; among the requirements are compliance with the contracted sowing plan and obtaining agricultural yield of at least 1.2 tons per hectare in irrigated areas and 1 in dry land,” the official stressed.
He also said that the covered tobacco of the new campaign has been fully contracted, but it is difficult to cover the 2,260 hectares, especially the 2,000 hectares of soles, he stressed.
“In addition to the low profitability of the crop lately, there is a lack of houses to cure tobacco, sick and aging producers, usufructuaries with that specific objective who have abandoned the land, places where there is no guarantee of water, something vital to achieve high agricultural yield; also the shortage of labor force in many areas, mainly because not all tobacco farmers can pay what the day laborers ask for,” the specialist explained.
In last mayDuring the harvest of the previous campaign, Hernández Toledo referred to the sol en palo tobacco, destined for the national cigarette industry, admitting that the harvest was 202,987 cujes, 65% of what was planned.
“We are estimating around 351 tons, the lowest production in the history of Sancti Spíritus,” the director said at the time.
Even if the stockpiles were carried out in the form of covering, the productive decline This led the province to fail to produce tobacco for the fourth consecutive year, as the campaign was expected to close at 87% of the total plan.
Among the causes of the low tobacco production, the agricultural director cited the late sowing of 146 hectares of sun-growing plantations in the first three months of the year, which did not yield good results.
