MIAMI, United States. – The 2022-2023 sugarcane harvest began this Friday in Cuba with the goal of producing 455,198 tons of sugar in a harvest that will be “small,” according to reported the news agency EFE.
The Cuban authorities in the sector expect that 6.5 million tons of sugar cane will be milled in the current harvest, in which only 23 plants will work, 13 less than in the previous season.
It is about harvesting “objective, flexible and, although small, with good practices”, concentrating resources in fewer plants with the aspiration of achieving “greater efficiency”, explained the president of Azcuba, Julio García Pérez, according to the EFE report.
In November, Azcuba reported that none of the Cuban companies involved in the sugar harvest had complied with the cane planting plan planned up to that moment.
In statements offered to the state newspaper GranmaDionis Pérez Pérez, director of Information Technology and Communications at Azcuba, pointed out that the harvest had been affected by several factors, including the lack of fuel or its late arrival, the problems of operating the machinery, the low technical availability of equipment, as well as the shortage of fertilizers and herbicides.
The manager revealed that barely 41% of the annual planting plan at the national level had been fulfilled. This means that of the 149,334 hectares of cane planned for this year, only 59,658 had been planted.
Pérez Pérez also spoke of other problems that have affected the poor harvest, such as the lack of motivation of the workers and the gradual loss of the labor force necessary to carry out the main tasks in the field.
The sugar harvest in Cuba has been in free fall for several years. The 2021-2022 campaign reached historic lows, with just 473,000 tons of sugar produced, a lower figure than those registered on the Island in the last 120 years.
With the objective of saving resources, the authorities assured that the 2022-2023 harvest would be “short, but efficient”, and that it should report some 455,198 tons of sugar, less than 20,000 tons than those produced in the previous year.
The sugar industry was in other times the economic locomotive of Cuba, but it suffered a drastic drop in production starting in the 1990s with the crisis that occurred after the fall of the USSR.
Receive information from CubaNet on your cell phone through WhatsApp. Send us a message with the word “CUBA” on the phone +525545038831, You can also subscribe to our electronic newsletter by giving click here.
