The sugar harvest 2022-2023 began this Friday in Cuba with the goal of producing less than half a million tons of sugar and starting a revival of this depressed economic sector, once the most important on the Island.
In the harvest, which began in the 14 de Julio mill in the province of Cienfuegos, only 23 factories will grind, 13 fewer than in the previous one, according to the strategy set forth by the Azcuba state group, which runs the area.
For the “July 14” of #Hundred fires the 2022-2023 harvest started in #Cuba.https://t.co/jugrZnPC0Y #CienfuegosWorkLiveYGrow @GAzcuba @EAA14July pic.twitter.com/cXo2Rc4mz4
– 5deeptembre.cu (@5deseptembrecu) November 26, 2022
The official projection is to produce 455,198 tons of sugar as a result of grinding 6.5 million tons of cane, according to what was reported weeks ago at a government meeting.
It is about making an “objective, flexible and, although small, good practices” harvest, concentrating resources in fewer plants with the aspiration of achieving “greater efficiency”, according to what the president of Azcuba, Julio García Pérez, pointed out at the time.
The destination of this harvest will be the family basket —which is sold rationed through the so-called supply book—, as well as for tourism, medicines, industrial productions and exports.
In addition to producing to satisfy national consumption, the sector’s plans point to the objective of producing more alcohol, electricity and derivatives for internal consumption and the foreign market, recalls the agency EFE.
In the previous campaign, around 480,000 tons of sugar were manufactured; 36 plants milled just over six million tons of cane and production was classified as the lowest in the last hundred years of this industry’s history in Cuba, according to data from a previous report.
The sugar sector on the Island employs more than 180,000 people directly, counting the families of the workers, so it is considered that more than 700,000 Cubans live from sugarcane production, according to official figures.
At the beginning of this month, only 41% of the 149,334 hectares (ha) of sugarcane had been planted on the island. sugar provided for in the annual plan, according to official sources.
That figure represented some 59,658.9 ha planted and it is expected to add another 9,000 to reach 46% of the plan, as stated to the official newspaper Granma Dionis Pérez, Director of Information Technology and Communications at Azcuba.
In Cuba, only 41% of the sugarcane planned for this year has been planted
The sugar industry was in other times Cuba’s economic locomotive, but it suffered a drastic drop in production starting in the 1990s with the economic crisis that followed the fall of the USSR and the socialist camp in Eastern Europe, he points out. EFE.
According to the Spanish media, Cuba had 156 factories operating in 1959, at the triumph of the revolution, which in that year produced 5.6 million tons of sugar. Later, productions rose to 8 million tons in the best vintages, registered between 1970 and 1989.
EFE / OnCuba
