Cuba planted only 69.4% of the area planned for sugarcane in 2021

The Cuban state sugar group Azcuba planted in 2021 only 69.4% of the area it planned to cultivate due to problems arising from the economic crisis, the official newspaper Granma reported.

The company closed the previous year with an actual planting of 90,588 hectares of cane, explained the director of Informatics and Communications of Azcuba, Dionis Pérez, to the official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC, only legal).

The gap was due to acumulus” of elements related to material limitations, specified the manager.

Perez quoted “lack of fuel”, especially severe in the east between January and March, “the problems of operating the machinery”, the “low technical availability of the equipment” and shortages of fertilizers and pesticides, as well as labor issues such as lack of motivation and labor shortages.

By campaigns, in the spring season 65% of what was planned was sown (45,664.5 hectares) and in the cold season, 74.5% (44,923.5 hectares).

According to data provided by the publication and prepared by Efe, Azcuba’s plan was to plant more than 130,530 hectares.

The information does not provide data on the official forecasts for the harvest, which the publication indicates is decided “to a greater extent by the number of hectares that can be planted“, but also “for the quality” with which it is sown.

These data are released after Azcuba described the 2020-2021 harvest as “one of the worst in the history of Cuba”, by achieving 1.2 million tons of sugar, 66% of the planned plan.

The president of Azcuba, Julio García, then alleged “organizational and management deficiencies”, broken equipment, low quality raw material and time lost in harvesting and transportation, as well as “financial difficulties, weather effects, accumulated problems in the infrastructure of the power plants and labor and technological indiscipline”.

The Cuban sugar industry, which was the mainstay and pride of its economy, is in a difficult situation. Of the 156 operating plants in Cuba before 1959, only 56 remain, and only 38 of them were milled in the 2020-2021 harvest.

The 1.2 million tons of the last harvest are far from the 5.6 million tons of sugar harvested in 1959, the year of the triumph of the revolution, and the up to 8 million achieved in the best seasons (between 1970 and 1989).

In the middle of last year, the leader of the revolution Raúl Castro proposed to the Cuban government the elaboration of a plan to “to save” the Cuban sugar industry.

Last December, the III plenary session of the Central Committee of the PCC approved the “transformation strategy” of the sector, as the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, called it.